Preamble

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That the Proceedings on Government Business be exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of the Standing Order (Sittings of the House)."—[Mr. H. Morrison.]

Orders of the Day — WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION (TEMPORARY INCREASES) BILL

Considered in Committee [Progress, 27th October].

[Major MILNER in the Chair]

Orders of the Day — CLAUSE 1.—(Supplementary allowances.)

Amendment proposed [27th October]; In page 2, line 10, after "child," to insert:—
whether born before or after the accident."—[Mr. Ness Edwards.]

Question again proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

Mr. Tinker: We left off the Debate on this matter for the purpose of enabling the Under-Secretary of State to report to the Home Secretary on the discussion which had taken place. I gathered from his remarks that he was sympathetic to what we had said but that he had not the power to come to any decision without consulting his Chief. There was a little argument about suspending operations, because some of our people thought that we might have won had the Question gone to a Division, but I myself was not so sure of that. If I had been I should have favoured a Division. On the other hand, I thought it was a question to be examined by the Home Secretary to see whether it was possible to give the concession. We are asking for all children, whether born before or after the accident, to be included in the benefit of workmen's compensation. Our argument is that when a child is to be brought into the world the father who is injured while following his employment ought not to be penalised because there is an extra child coming. On the other hand, it might be said that the child ought not to come, but that raises the moral issue, and one does not want to suppress what are called the proper operations of man, and


not only that, it should be a State responsibility. It is said that, owing to the war and other things, we want to build up our man-power for the future, and every child brought into the world is an asset. The arguments that might be put against the merits of the case of the workman injured in regard to his family and the question of State responsibility are that it is not the employer's responsibility, that it is not right that he should have to undertake an added burden, and that it would be unfair to ask him to do so. The whole of the cost of the proceedings comes out of the workman first of all. The employer cannot carry on his work unless he is getting output from his workmen. What is called the premium that insures compensation claims being paid comes out of the assets of the industry. From all points of view, I think we are entitled to this concession.
I gather that the argument against it may be that this is an innovation in England, that it has never been attempted before, but in a Bill of this kind we believe that it is right and proper that there should be no objection to making a step forward in the cause of justice and equity. I want to give the Home Secretary my assurance that we do not intend to take anything to a Division to-day. We want the Bill, but we make a plea to him that on matters of this kind, when we put sound arguments before him, he may meet us on those lines.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Herbert Morrison): I very much appreciate the conciliatory spirit in which my hon. Friend has put his point of view on this Amendment. I assure him that I shall respond with no less courtesy than that which he extended to me. My right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary reported to me fully on the discussion which took place on this Amendment before the Committee reported Progress last week, and gave me a very full account. Moreover, I read the whole of the Debate particularly as, unfortunately, I was not able to be present. Along with the Under-Secretary and officers of the Department, I have given the matter very careful consideration. There are two difficulties about the proposal. There is no precedent for it except to the extent, which I ought in all fairness to say, that it is the case that in the instance of a dis-

abled ex-Service man, if he is adjudged by the competent authority to be a person who is totally unemployable, the future child—the child of future conception and birth—is brought into account. That is the only case where this principle has been adopted, and consequently, if we were to bring it into this Bill on the basis of the Amendment, which brings all the further children into credit, we should have brought into the Bill an innovation which has very sharp repercussions on a wide variety of other provisions for children's allowances of one sort or another. The Government feel that it is very difficult to deal with in this Bill without full and further consideration. The other point is that this Bill, on the present structure of the whole workmen's compensation administration, is by its very nature perhaps the least attractive kind of structure and legal instrument with which to try this experiment. The whole doctrine of workmen's compensation comes from the doctrine of employers' liability. Far be it from me to deny my hon. Friend's doctrine, that labour is the source of all wealth and that ultimately everything, including the employer's contribution, must come from it. I am not sure that that doctrine would be approved in all quarters of the Committee, but it is not for me to dispute that doctrine with my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker). That can be done otherwise. Nevertheless, as a matter of form and of accountancy, all these payments come out of contributions, as things are, that are made either direct by the employers or by the employers through premiums paid to insurance organisations.
This is not a social service structure at all. It is a structure based on employers' liability, and all these things in the end cannot be settled as we settle them by social service administration, administratively. Ultimately it depends upon legal sanction and arguments in the court. Therefore it appears to the Government that it would not be wise to make this Amendment in this Bill on this type of legislation. I will, however, in considering the long-term Measure, give fair and not unsympathetic consideration to the points that have been raised. But there are two ways by which it may be possible to give consideration in long-term legislation; the workmen's compensation aspect of which I hope will be legislation of the social service


variety instead of the employers' liability variety. The second point is that the Government in the Beveridge Debate—the Committee will agree with me—committed themselves in principle to children's allowances. I do not want to go over that ground, and I should be out of Order in doing so, but the Government were very forthcoming in the declaration they made about children's allowances. If and when we get children's allowances, which I personally hope we shall, all these problems will automatically be solved in another way as a question of social service provision. I suggest to the Committee that there are real administrative difficulties about the Government accepting this doctrine in this Bill and that owing to the nature of the Bill and to its structure it would be wiser to leave this matter for consideration either in connection with the longer term Workmen's Compensation Bill, which I very much hope to introduce, or in connection with children's allowances, which will give us a complete solution of all these borderline cases as to what children should come in and what children should not. In these circumstances I hope my hon. Friends will see their way not to press the Amendment.

Mr. Graham White: As the right hon. Gentleman has said, the Government were very forthcoming in the matter of family allowances during the Beveridge Debate, and for my part I sincerely hope that the reasonable offer he has made will be accepted. The matter of obtaining concessions and improvements in our social services piecemeal has in the past been the cause of the haphazard and anomalous state of these services, and it is on the lines of dealing with these matters comprehensively and in a well ordered framework that we must proceed. That is the proper way to bring them about. This Amendment appeals to the sense of justice of everybody, but I am sure the Committee will welcome the statement made by the Home Secretary that the matter will receive attention in a properly ordered framework.

Mr. Colegate: I have great sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) in this matter. There is a widespread feeling throughout industry, and especially the

heavy industries, that workmen's compensation is on a very unsatisfactory basis and that very considerable amendments would have to be made to the law if it was to be amended and extended satisfactorily from the basis on which it has rested during the last 20 or 30 years. I welcome very much the Home Secretary's indication that this Bill is only to be a temporary stopgap. It would, as I understand it, be in operation for no more than a year or two at the outside, and to a very large extent it will be replaced by a wide scheme of services in connection with injury and death in industry. This, I think, will meet the point which has been raised to-day and on previous occasions. It is generally felt throughout industry that there must be a complete and comprehensive change of policy in order that the whole situation may be satisfactorily met.

Mr. Tinker: After hearing the frank statement of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

The Chairman: Only the Mover of the Amendment can withdraw it. The Amendment will have to be negatived.

Amendment negatived.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Peake): I beg to move, in page 2, line 11, at the end, to insert:
Provided that a child who,—

(i) has attained the age of fifteen years, and
(ii) was, when he attained that age, a child receiving full-time instruction in a school,

shall be treated for the purposes of paragraph (c) of this subsection as if he did not attain that age until the date on which he ceases to be a child receiving full-time instruction as aforesaid or the thirty-first day of July next following the day on which he attains the age of sixteen years, whichever is the earlier date.
This Amendment illustrates very well what my right hon. Friend has been saying on the question of there being a suitable precedent and the difficulty of placing, in a workmen's compensation scheme, a greater burden upon those who have to pay the compensation than the State itself is prepared to undertake towards the persons to whom it has a duty. In 1940 we had a long discussion on the question of extending the age up to which a child's allowance could be drawn where the child was undergoing whole-time education. At


that time we felt unable to extend the age beyond 15, because the scheme recently introduced by the Government for compensating persons injured by enemy action did not provide for the payment of the allowance beyond the age of 15. That scheme has been amended since 1940, and, consequently, we are now able to introduce into the workmen's compensation scheme a corresponding provision. As hon. Members will see, it will enable a child's allowance to be drawn up to the age of 16, or even beyond where the child is undergoing full-time education. The precise words are:
… until the date on which he ceases to be a child receiving full time instruction … or the thirty-first day of July next following the day on which he attains the age of sixteen years …
I think that meets the point raised by hon. Members opposite on an earlier Amendment and will give general satisfaction.

Amendment agreed to.

The Chairman: I think it will probably be for the convenience of the Committee if the next two Amendments on the Order Paper are discussed together.

Mr. Tom Brown: I beg to move, in page 2, line 24, to leave out "two-thirds," and to insert "seven-eighths".
On the Second Reading of the Bill which took place on 21st October my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith), in a very eloquent and moving speech, painted a very distressing and harrowing picture of the colossal casualty list in the mining industry. Later in the Debate reference was made to the alarming casualty lists in factories and mills. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke said that in 1942 over 120,000 miners were injured, and it is to help these cases that this Amendment and the following Amendment on the Order Paper, on page 2, line 28, to leave out "two-thirds" and to insert "seven-eighths," have been put down. Let us try for the purposes of clarity to convert these fractions into terms of pounds, shillings and pence. Take a surface worker in the mining industry who gets the wage of £4 6s. 6d.—that is, provided he works every week for a full week and works every week during the year. That becomes the basic figure which will determine the full or partial compensation to be paid. On the two-thirds

suggested in the Bill, he will get a maximum compensation of £2 17s. 8d., provided he has the family to warrant the supplementary allowances; but if we substituted seven-eighths for two-thirds it would give a maximum of £3 15s. 10d. That is a difference of 18s. 2d. I know there are profound humanitarian feelings in the heart of the Home Secretary in particular, and he will appreciate that when men are injured, and some of these men are injured very severely, they are in need of the maximum amount of income to help them to get the restoratives required in their injured state. It may be that the Under-Secretary will, in his reply, speak of the increased cost of substituting seven-eighths for two-thirds. In the mining industry, of which I speak with particular knowledge, the cost of compensation is treated as a cost other than wages, and therefore the miners in some districts would pay 87 per cent. of the total extra cost and in other districts 85 per cent.; but the miners would not be disturbed if they were assured that it would bring sustenance and comfort to their injured fellow workmen.
As my final word, let me assure the right hon. Gentleman and the Under-Secretary that we shall never rest satisfied until the recommendation of the Holman-Gregory Report of 1920 with regard to full compensation is adopted. That Report recommended that the injured workman should be paid full wages during whatever period he might be off work, whether a long period or a short period. That principle has been adopted in many other walks of life, and I am delighted to learn from the right hon. Gentleman that when he brings forward his comprehensive Measure in the near future all this tinkering with workmen's compensation will come to an end. A feeling is sometimes manifested in this House that we are unmindful of the concessions which have already been given by the Home Office. We are not unmindful of the concessions given by this Bill, but we say that we are entitled, when the opportunity presents itself, to put forward our point of view in our efforts to bring about desirable changes in the very complicated and confusing legislation dealing with workmen's compensation, which has been a bugbear for many years and still is. I beg the Under-Secretary to give consideration to the Amendment.

Mr. Foster: I should like to support the arguments put forward by the hon. Member for Ince (Mr. T. Brown) to show the effect of the two-thirds limit upon cases that existed before the beginning of the war. The two-thirds limit introduces a new principle. It was not embodied in the Act of 1940, where the limit of seven-eighths applies to all cases, and I should like the Under-Secretary to explain why the two-thirds maximum has now been introduced. The two-thirds limit will deprive hundreds if not thousands of men who were injured before the war of any increases at all, and in many other cases they will receive only part increases. Take the case of a single man who is at present receiving 35s. If we take that 35s. as being two-thirds of his pre-accident average weekly earnings., then any workman who was earning less than £2 12s. 6d. will not get even the 35s. If his pre-accident average weekly earnings were under £3 he will receive only a part of the 5s., even after the first. 13 weeks. In the Bill it is proposed to give 5s. after the first 13 weeks, which would raise the money to £2, but to get that £2 his pre-war average weekly earnings must have been £3. The position is worse in the case of a married man without children. Assume that his pre-accident average weekly earnings were £3, which would be the minimum to enable him to get the maximum compensation of £2, which is two-thirds of £3. At present he will be having 35s. compensation. It is proposed to give him in the first 13 weeks another 5s. for his wife. That brings him immediately up to his two-thirds figure. The next proposal is that after the 13 weeks he shall have another 10s., but he will not get that 10s., because he is already up to his two-thirds. It will be obvious that there will be many cases where the married man will be deprived in the first place of the full increase of 5s., and many thousands of cases in which married men will never receive any part of the 10s. after the first 13 weeks.
I do not know whether all the implications following from the introduction of this two-thirds limit have been fully gone into by the Home Office and whether they have noted these anomalies. If they have done so I am rather surprised that they introduced the two-thirds limit. In the cases I have mentioned it will be a very serious matter indeed. I should like to

point out that the Bill will cover all cases from the year 1925 onwards, including those which occurred in the years when employment was slack, particularly in the mining industry. They will be affected in spite of the arrangements made for an automatic review of cases in order that the figure of the pre-accident average weekly earnings may be increased by the amount of war increases in wages granted since. We shall have cases in which a man who was injured during that period of slack employment is deprived of an increase in compensation while his pal, who may Jive next door or whom he meets in the pub or the club, and who was fortunate enough to be hurt at a time when employment was pretty regular, will get an increase. Such cases are bound to create a feeling of unfairness. I think the Home Secretary will appreciate the feelings of the injured workman in those circumstances when he is not going to get any benefit from the Bill.
What the Bill means in effect is that the single man, if he is to receive even the 5s. after the first 13 weeks, must have £3 average weekly earnings, otherwise he will get less. In the case of the married man without children, if he is to get the 10s. after the first 13 weeks, he must have an average weekly wage of £3 15s. If he has less than that, he will not get the full 10s. I suggest that it is grossly unfair both to the single man and to the married man, and I hope something can be done to remove the two-thirds and apply the seven-eighths as it was in the Act of 1940. That would go a long way to remove the anomalies which will arise as a result of the two-thirds principle.

Mr. Peake: This is a very complicated matter, as hon. Members opposite are aware, and one has to do a great deal of mathematics out loud if one is to deal with individual cases. I would explain to my hon. Friends how the need for an overriding maximum arises from the method we have adopted of giving a flat-rate supplement to workmen's compensation payments rather than raising the maximum in relation to the pre-accident earnings. It was the general wish of the workers' representatives that we should give an increase by way of a flat-rate supplement rather than by raising the ceiling under the 1925 Act. The result is that you still have the old ceiling of 305. a week under that Act, and to that are


added flat-rate supplements of varying amounts, which, in the case of a married man disabled for a long period, may be as much as 20s, a week. The result of that is that there is clearly a necessity for an overriding maximum, unless we are prepared to have cases where the compensation exceeds the pre-accident earnings. I think hon. Members recognise that, because the Amendment is to remove the two-thirds and to insert seven-eighths. I think there is agreement in the Committee that some overriding maximum is required.
I would explain that there already is a seven-eighths overriding maximum where there are children, and children's allowances are drawn. It is only where there are no children's allowances that the two-thirds overriding maximum applies. The hon. Member who moved the Amendment was under a complete misapprehension in the case which he cited on that point. He told us of a miner earning £4 6s. 6d. a week whose compensation, under the seven-eighths rule, might have been £3 15s, a week and under the two-thirds rule would be only £2 17s. 8d.

Mr. Tom Brown: I said where he had a family it would give him the right to attain to that figure.

Mr. Peake: Yes, I was going to point out that in order to attain to either of those figures he would have to have children. The maximum that a married man can get without children is 50s. Where children exist, the seven-eighths maximum already applies. In the case which the hon. Member cited, if the man had a sufficient number of children—and it is perfectly true that he would have to have six or seven children to arrive at that figure—he could draw up to 70s. or nearly 80s. a week. It is only where there are no children that the two-thirds overriding maximum operates. The reason for that—and I apoligise for referring to it, as I am afraid it may aggravate hon. Members opposite—is that it is one of the recommendations of the Report of Sir William Beveridge. He suggested that the present compensation system should be swept away and that in long-term cases there should be two-thirds of pre-accident earnings with a maximum of 60s. That is really the only reason why this figure appears in the Bill. We do not want there to be cases where men, under

the existing system, may get more than two-thirds their earnings without any children and then, if we should adopt this part of the Beveridge scheme, they should suffer a reduction in weekly payments. That is the only reason that it appears in the Bill.
We have put in a proviso in order to make sure that, as the result of the two-thirds overriding maximum where there are no children, nobody suffers on what they are getting under the old Act. It is extremely complicated. Under the old Act, a very low-wage earner may be getting 75 per cent. of his pre-accident earnings. The addition of any flat-rate supplement such as was given in 1940 to that figure has already brought him up to seven-eighths of his pre-accident earnings. Where that situation exists, that man's position is safeguarded, and there will be no reduction of rate. That will apply to future as well as to old cases. There is a proviso in the Clause that no man's rate under the overriding maximum of two-thirds shall be less than it was under the Act of 1940.

Mr. Tom Brown: We are somewhat disturbed about how this two-thirds business has come into the picture at all, and I would like to ask whether the Government have been guided to some extent by the evidence submitted to the Holman-Gregory Commission.

Mr. Peake: I am afraid it was a more recent report.

Mr. Brown: In view of the Minister's statement, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."

Mr. Ellis Smith: I want to raise what may appear to be a small point but which, in its application and administration, is very serious. The Bill is based upon the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1925, Section 10 of which determines the method of calculating the compensation to be paid weekly. That is determined by the average weekly earnings during the 12 months period prior to the accident. We are becoming more and more concerned about the overhead charges in industry, which are bound to have a very serious effect. With the introduction of the pay-


as-you-go system, they will increase, and more calculations will have to be made by the clerical staffs and by the Department responsible for the fixing of wages. We shall find the same applying more and more to workmen's compensation.
Just let me as briefly as possible give a concrete case. In the engineering industry, for example, I should think there is a more complicated method of determining wages than in any other industry. There are about four tables for overtime and week-end work. In addition to that, there is a complicated method of determining piecework earnings, and when a man or woman receives an injury in the engineering industry it means that a great deal of time has to be put in by the clerical staff in determining the pre-accident average weekly earnings. The Under-Secretary some time ago gave an undertaking in the House that consideration would be given to this and that he would try to arrange for the employers and the trade unions to meet together along with the representatives of the Home Office in order to see whether they could simplify this method of determining the pre-accident average weekly earnings. We think that although this is only a temporary Measure, the temporary period may extend over a comparatively long time. Therefore in view of the concern on this point which found expression in all parts of the House in regard to this question and the amount of work that has to be put in by the clerical staff, could we get the members of the various interests together to see whether we can get a more simplified method of determining the pre-accident average weekly earnings?
I never believe in making suggestions unless I have a constructive proposal to make. In the situation we are in surely the average weekly earnings of the people employed in a particular department ought to be sufficient to determine a man's pre-accident earnings instead of going into all these individual cases and making a calculation based upon the earnings of a particular individual. Therefore, first of all I would like to ask whether the Under-Secretary has carried out that promise which he made, if he did make it; and also whether he will give further consideration to the view I have put forward in order that we may try to arrive at agreement on the matter I have mentioned.

Mr. Tinker: I wish to make a few general comments, because there have been many heartburnings at the way in which this matter is dealt with and what this Clause contains. Our fight was on the 13 weeks condition. We felt strongly on that, because we did not and we cannot understand why an injured workman should be deprived of any benefit for any period at all. For the first 13 weeks he is not to have any advantage under this Measure. It is very unfair, and this House is agreeing for the first time in its history to a form of legislation which hits a certain section of the community very hard indeed. One cannot allow the Clause to go without protest, in the hope that this provision may be eliminated in any future legislation. Had this matter been left to a free vote, there is not the slightest question but that this Bill would have been defeated. We are in a difficult position. There have been understandings outside, and I do not want to get away from them, because when any legislation of this nature is brought forward, there will have to be negotiations outside to see whether some measure of agreement can be reached. I am not one of those who say that that cannot take place, but when that form of understanding is something which cuts right across the true principle that should be applied, we have the right to protest.
I think the Committee displayed itself very well on the Committee stage. Some 20 speeches were made, 17 of which from all sides of the House were in favour of amending the 13 weeks provision. The Government men of course stood by it, and there were two, one from our side who had been in the negotiations, and another, who also supported that point of view, but the overwhelming opinion of the Committee was that had there been a free vote, it would have gone against the Government. If it had done so, the Bill would have been lost. That is a difficult position to place us in. If I may make reference to the Noble Lord the Member for Horsham and Worthing (Earl Winterton), he sat listening to the Debate and was stirred in the true Parliamentary sense to make this remark:
The mere fact that there is no ordinary Opposition, that the House is almost united in support of the Government, should not cause the Government—and this would apply to the Prime Minister—to take action which is plainly against the wishes of everyone in


the Chamber and which can only be carried by the votes of those outside."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th October, 1943; col. 239, Vol. 393.]
He meant to say those who were not listening to the Debate. That is true. Those who were present in the Chamber and who listened to the arguments put forward in support of the Amendment were almost united in saying that this Amendment that we put forward ought to be adopted by the Government. What the Noble Lord meant by "those outside" were those Members who were in the other places but who would crowd into the Division Lobby. I am not making any attack; I have done it myself. I have been summoned to a Division when I have not been in the Chamber and have said to my Whip, "Which way shall I vote?" but anyone listening to the arguments put forward on this proposed Amendment to Clause 1 would have been bound to say that this legislation was taking a wrong step. We are not going to vote against this, but we are bound to register our protest in the hope that what we are saying may have some bearing on future legislation.

Major Lyons: I merely want, if I may, to endorse the views that have been expressed by the hon. Gentleman opposite on this novelty in legislation. For myself I hope that the temporary period to be covered by this Bill will be made as short as possible and that as soon as possible in the future a comprehensive and consolidating Measure will be introduced. May I make one further protest on the present Clause? By its limitation on income it continues the provision whereby the standard of life of the injured man during the period of his compensation under the Bill is automatically reduced because of the injury. There can never be any justification to say to an injured man, who after all is an industrial casualty, "When you get your compensation it will be at such a rate, that it is less than the rate of your pre-accident earnings."
I have raised this issue before in Workmen's Compensation Debates and I am absolutely of the view that a man who has fallen by the way as an industrial casualty should not necessarily have a lower income than before. We all know that in other cases of compensation addi-

tional provision is made and recognised by the court for special food and nourishment, extra items that the man wants when he is sick but may not need when he is well. Not only is there here no provision for that, but this Bill maintains the limit to the amount he may receive from all additions so that he gets less than his income before the accident. That means to say, in fact, that because of the accident his standard of life is depressed, and this automatically depresses the standard of life of his household. There is no justification for that. It is quite indefensible. I hope when this temporary Measure comes to an end—and I trust its period will be short—that that will end for all time and that the House of Commons will not accept finally any provision which imposes upon these households a depressed standard of life through no fault of the wage-earner. I utter my word of protest on this matter and hope that we shall not have long to wait for appropriate legislation when that provision will have gone for all time.

Mr. Quintin Hogg: I hope the Committee will forgive me if I express a genuine intellectual difficulty which I feel and which has not been fully set at rest by such speeches as we have heard. This is a temporary Measure. It has embodied a principle which is referred to in a Report of which a good deal has been spoken. The difficulty in relating the temporary Measure to the future permanent Measure is that raised by the hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker). The permanent Measure is not to be confined to this matter of workmen's compensation. One of the aims will be to introduce a health benefit based on subsistence. The difficulty will be to correlate that with an accident benefit based on earnings. Let us, for example, take two men, who fall on a banana skin in the street, with serious consequences. One is carrying a note to his employer, while the other is not—he is just out for a walk. The one who is not carrying a note to his employer will get the health benefit based on a flat subsistence rate. The other is working for his employer, and is, therefore, given a different benefit based on earnings. It is terribly difficult to know how those two men, who, in exactly similar circumstances, have received the same injury, should have their two benefits correlated. Sir William Beveridge's solution was that


both should receive the same rate for 13 weeks. That was not done out of any desire to depress the standard of living of the man who happened to be carrying a note to his employer, but because of the difficulty of correlating the rates for two men, in the same walk of life, who have received the same injury. I am not sure that Sir William Beveridge's solution is the ideal one, but it is not inspired by anything like inhumane motives. I have yet to see the perfect solution of this fundamental problem. Therefore, although I am in general sympathy with the object of the hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker), I cannot express my own feelings towards this Clause, as the hon. Member did, in the form of a protest.

Mr. Shinwell: This is our final opportunity of recording a quite legitimate protest against the discrimination shown in this Bill as between the single man and the married man. It is not the intention of hon. Members on this side to divide, but it would be quite wrong for the Committee to suppose that we are happy about this discrimination. I appreciate the substantial efforts which the Home Secretary has made to introduce improvements in this very small Measure. We are grateful for them, and the men concerned will be grateful, but the discrimination is undoubtedly inconsistent with trade union practice and principle. It has always been held in the trade union movement that there should be no discrimination in respect of compensation, and particularly as regards wage rates between single and married men. It is now accepted, almost univerally, that the rate of pay should be equalised, not only as between single and married men but as between the sexes—the rate for the job should be paid. It is difficult to understand why there should be discrimination in respect of compensation.
It would be most inappropriate at this stage to enter into the controversy which characterised the earlier stages of our discussion. We are told that there is no advantage in indulging in recriminations, and certainly no advantage is to be gained from attacking my right hon. Friend or the Under Secretary. But I express the view of my hon. Friends and of a number of hon. Members opposite when I say that, having accepted this Measure, we expect of my right hon. Friend a very

early and substantial approach to comprehensive legislation affecting workmen's compensation. I am certain that my right hon. Friend will be fair enough to agree that this question of extended workmen's compensation legislation is no new proposal. It has been before this House for the last quarter of a century. Although occasionally we have had driblets of legislation, on a very small scale, there has been no substantial improvement gained. It may be that my right hon. Friend is awaiting the full consideration that is now being given to the Beveridge Report proposals. The sooner we have those proposals embodied in legislation, perhaps in an improved form, the better for all of us: the better for the security of the people of this country and the better for our peace of mind, because undoubtedly security—and workmen's compensation enters very largely into the question of security—is a matter which concerns everybody. Whether my right hon. Friend is awaiting such legislation or whether he proposes to come forward with an independent Workmen's Compensation Bill, on a much improved scale, one cannot say, but before long we may have to press my right hon. Friend or some other appropriate Minister to produce such legislation.
There has been a good deal of heat engendered in these discussions. I do not see myself why there should have been: it has been quite a straightforward up and down case; and my right hon. Friend cannot say that I engendered any heat. I did suggest in the course of a speech that my right hon. Friend was a pastmaster in the art of intimidation, but that is quite a pleasant observation—much more pleasant, I might say, than many of the observations which my right hon. Friend occasionally addresses to me. We need not make a song and dance about that; we understand each other quite well. So far as I am concerned there is no desire to engender any heat into the discussion now, when we have reached a late stage in the consideration of this Measure. We are very anxious to obtain some benefits for the people concerned. That is the prime consideration of hon. Members on this side. I will be quite frank, and say that we could not afford to lose this Bill, insubstantial as it is. It would be quite improper if we threw away even modified legislation which would put into the


pockets of injured men a few more shillings per week. My right hon. Friend knew that we were in that position. Much as we dislike this discrimination between single and married men, we accept the Bill for what it is worth, in the hope that substantial legislation on workmen's compensation will soon be forthcoming.

Mr. Peake: I think that before we part with this Clause I ought to reply briefly to the points which have been raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Stake (Mr. Ellis Smith) asked about the undertaking given Last January to examine further the question of the method of calculating pre-accident earnings. I dealt with that matter in my winding-up speech in the Debate on the Second Reading, which is reported in Hansard of 21st October, col. 1607, Vol. 392. Shortly, the position is that we did examine this question with representatives of the Trades Union Congress on several occasions. We examined it with members of the British Employers' Confederation and also at joint meetings of the two bodies. Our examination showed us that the problem was much more difficult than we had at first envisaged, and convinced me that, in regard to our long-term scheme, we must try to arrive at some simpler method of calculating compensation. The present system is infinitely complex. It is so complex that I do not think one working-man in a thousand can possibly understand how his compensation is calculated. It will be a great advantage if, in regard to the long-term scheme, we can arrive at something which is at any rate comprehensible, and that is all we shall endeavour to do. I appreciate what the hon. Member said in that regard and the large measure of agreement which it seemed to command in the Committee.
The hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) deplored what he called the discrimination in this Bill against the single man. I quite agree that when one is making any improvement in benefit rates it is very nice, if one possibly can, to do something for everybody and to do the most for those whose need is greatest. It has been the sad fact that in this Bill, in view of the recommendations of the report to which I have referred already, we have felt unable to do anything for the single man. But now that the Bill is to go on the Statute Book, hon. Members will want to put the best light they can upon its provisions in their constituencies. I would

therefore point out to them that they can say, with truth, that long-term cases will benefit, that old cases will benefit whether they are cases of single people or married people, because the single man's benefit in the long-term case, is improved from a maximum of 35s. to 40s. In the second place, in the industry with which compensation is so largely concerned, the mining industry, we are informed that a very high proportion of the men are married men. It has been estimated by the people whose duty it is to advise us upon these matters, that the percentage of married men in the mining industry may be as high as 70. If that be the case, it is clear that the mining industry is going to get a large share of the benefits conferred by the Bill. Hon. Members, I think, might be able to point out to some of their constituents who complained that nothing was being done in the Bill for the single man in the short-term case, that the single man has a remedy in his own hands, because he can go and get married.

Mr. Shinwell: Do I understand from what my right hon. Friend has just said that if an injured single man is in receipt of 35s. a week and decides to marry, then immediately he is married he will receive 40s.?

Mr. Peake: No, I fear my hon. Friend his misunderstood me. I was suggesting that it might be pointed out that the precaution of marriage might precede the accident. My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford (Mr. Hogg) rendered a service in drawing the attention of the Committee to the historical and political consequences of treating industrial disability, as we have done in this country, on a wholly different footing from the treatment of disability arising from other causes. That is bound to have a profound significance in the drawing-up of any long-term scheme dealing with cases of industrial disability, and I hope that hon. Members will read what my hon. Friend said, in order that they may apply their minds to this great difficulty, which Sir William Beveridge did not wholly succeed in overcoming, of reconciling the historical treatment of industrial accidents with its inclusion in a comprehensive scheme of social insurance.
It would be invidious on my part to compare the charming tone of the remarks made to-day by the hon. Member


for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell) with the tone of his remarks of two or three days ago. At any rate, his attitude towards the Bill seems to be a little more friendly to-day than it was when we previously discussed this Measure. I can only say that as regards the wife's allowance, it has been generally accepted on behalf of the working-class movement by the Compensation Committee of the Trades Union Congress, and although the employers argued, as does my hon. Friend, that it is not a proper subject for inclusion in a workmen's compensation scheme, my own view is that by bringing in the wife's allowance, we have been able to confer benefits upon the married man which we should not have been able to do, had we compelled ourselves to treat the single man and the married man on exactly the same basis. In conclusion on this Clause, may I say that if we can approach the discussion of the long-term scheme—which my right hon. Friend and I are most anxious to introduce and to get placed on the Statute Book—in the more temperate atmosphere in which we have discussed this Bill this morning, I am sure we shall be able to co-operate in building up something very good for the future.

Major Lyons: Before my right hon. Friend leaves this Clause, could he tell the Committee whether, in approaching that long-term scheme, the Department will give consideration to the question of doing away with all the limitations which compel compensation to be less than the pre-accident rate of earnings?

Mr. Peake: No. I am afraid I could not go into that point at this stage.

Question, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill," put, and agreed to.

Orders of the Day — CLAUSE 2.—(Lump sum payments.)

Mr. Foster: I beg to move, in page 3, line 11, to leave out "seven", and to insert "nine".
I hope that neither the Home Secretary nor the Under-Secretary will seek to bring Sir William Beveridge to their aid in resisting this Amendment as they have successfully done in resisting other Amendments to this Bill. I do not think they will be able to do so in this case. The Amendment seeks to increase the maximum compensation from £600 to £900 instead of from £600 to £700 as proposed

in the Bill. The maximum of £600 was made up of two lump-sum amounts—£300 being the maximum for the widow who was wholly dependent upon her husband and the other £300 being the maximum in regard to dependent children's allowance. What the Home Secretary has done has been to raise the widow's maximum from £300 to £400, and to make no increase in the remaining £300 in respect of the children's allowances. I do not know why that has been done, because, in the first place, in the weekly payment, if you take an average family of three children, there is an increase of 37 per cent. in the children's allowances in the case of an injured workman. It is rather strange that an increase should be given in the case of total incapacity or partial incapacity but no increase when there is a fatal accident. I cannot understand that at all. In the Second Reading Debate the Home Secretary made a statement which I will quote. He said:
If, however, the lump sum payable to an adult dependant is less than the maximum of £400, the difference up to £700 can be used to increase the amount payable in respect of the children." [OFFICTAL REPORT, 21st October, 1943; col. 1547, Vol. 392.]
I rather question that statement. My interpretation of the 1925 Act is that £600 is payable in two separate sums of £300 each, and you cannot use any of the first £300 for children's allowances. If that same principle is applied to the sum of £400 in the present Bill, we shall not be allowed to use that for children's allowances. Perhaps the Home Secretary or the Under-Secretary will answer that point. Those who have had anything to do with the working of the 1925 Act know that the method adopted when arriving at some settlement is to take the average weekly earnings, which are at present limited to £2, and multiply them by three years, that is, by 156 weeks. You cannot exceed £300 in the case of the widow or £300 in the case of the children. By increasing the Loco for the widow to £400 the previous earnings of £2 will become £2 11s. 3d., because 156 times that makes £400. The children's allowances are fixed at 15 per cent. of the average weekly earnings. At present that means 6s., and it is 6s. a week for every week that the child is short of 15 years of age. By increasing the widow's compensation from £300 to £400 the £2 per week becomes £2 11s. 3d. and the 15 per cent. is raised from 6s. to 7s. 8d. In order to obtain the


present maximum of £300 for the children, you must take 1,000 weeks at 6s. By introducing this increased compensation for the widow you are cutting out in the case of the big family a matter of 127 weeks which come into the calculation at the present time. In a word, you have reduced the 1,000 weeks to 783 by raising the 15 per cent. from 6s. to 7s. 8d.
That, in my opinion, is an injustice to the big families. It cuts out children who otherwise would be paid because you are not able to exceed £300. My main point is that there is no increase in children's allowances if the widow is entitled to £400. There is a little doubt about the position if the widow is not entitled to £300, because of the Home Secretary's statement, but that point can be cleared up. The point of the Amendment is that we cannot see why there should be an increase in children's allowances of 37 per cent. in cases of total incapacity but no increase in cases of fatal accident. I do not know whether the experts in the Home Office have gone into the matter minutely. The Home Secretary said that the 1925 Act was complicated. I do not know of any Act so complicated and bristling with so many difficulties. The proposed method of increasing compensation will make the law still more complicated. The workman will not be able to understand why, if it is fair to give increased allowances for children in cases of incapacity, there should be no increase in cases of fatal accident.

Mr. T. J. Brooks: May I ask a question, because I think there may be a wrong impression? Are we to understand from the remarks made by the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Foster) that there must be an increase in earnings to allow a dependant to get £400? Must there be an increase in earnings to get that?

Mr. H. Morrison: On the point just raised, it is perfectly true that there is a relationship to earnings in the case of the widow. On the other hand, as the minimum is increased and the maximum is increased, it is tolerably certain that the widow will be better off than under earlier legislation. The hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Foster) put his point very fairly and clearly, but I am not myself quite clear on one point. I could not quite follow his argument about 783 weeks.

Mr. Foster: Under the present Act £300 is the maximum for children. To get that, we must have 1,000 weeks for all the children at 6s. a week. By increasing the widow's compensation from £300 to £400, if the widow gets the maximum amount, you must divide it by 156, which increases the average weekly earnings from to £2 11s. 3d. That gives the increase of 15 per cent. and raises the 6s. to 7s. 8d. Therefore, it reduces the 1,000 weeks to 783 weeks to make up £300. You cut out 127 weeks which at present are brought into the calculation.

Mr. H. Morrison: The unfortunate circumstance is that the only person on the Treasury bench who is at all capable of giving satisfaction, with the technical knowledge of my hon. Friend, is my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, and I happen to be replying to this Amendment. It is most unfortunate. If my hon. Friend would have a talk with the Under-Secretary, I am sure they would agree upon the facts, but my right hon. Friend assures me that on the present level of earnings the widow is pretty certain to be better off under these proposals because of the maximum addition which she will tend to get under this Bill. We believe that that will be the tendency, and we think that that will probably be so.

Mr. Foster: The right hon. Gentleman is making the position worse by putting out the 27 weeks which, under the present Act, are taken into consideration.

Mr. Morrison: I think the best thing is for me to drop this chapter and leave it to my right hon. Friend, who may say a word or two after I sit down, because I would like the point to be cleared up if possible. On the main point—and my hon. Friend has stated it truthfully and accurately—we have increased the maximum in respect of the widow from £300 to £400, and we have also increased the minimum. We have left the children's allotment where it was except for this point, with which my hon. Friend is agreed, that, if the widow does not get £400, then, such sum as is not spent on the widow can be spent on the children, subject to the over-all maximum of £700. My hon. Friend would like to know the reason for there being no increase in respect of the children, and I will tell him. The calculation is that on the basis of 6s. per child per week we get


to the maximum of £300 by some mathematical reasoning. It is true that, if there are several young children of school age, the average of 6s. per week would be reduced, and therefore they would not be credited with the full amount. But the change in the circumstances since the Act of 1924 is the Widows', Orphans' and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act, which provided for the first time 5s. for the first child and 3s. for each additional child. We thought it would not be right, having regard to that useful provision, that we should in this present legislation increase the provision in respect of children except by the fortuitous circumstances I have mentioned and to which my hon. Friend has also agreed.

Mr. Foster: I would like the Home Secretary to have in his mind that the lump sum which has been obtained and paid into court becomes exhausted after a certain period, and a widow is then left with her 10s. a week under the Widows' and Orphans' Pensions Act. That pension continues as long as she remains unmarried, but the lump sum becomes exhausted, and I would like my right hon. Friend to have that fact in mind.

Mr. Morrison: That is the evil of the lump-sum system. In these circumstances she will have received the compensation in respect of the children. She will go on getting certain payments as the widowed mother of children under the Act which I have mentioned, but once the £200 has gone she is back where she was unless she happens to have been lucky enough to have invested the money in a small business in which she is doing well. But I am afraid there are many cases in which such people invest the money in small businesses and do not do well. We think what we are providing will be fair and equitable, and certainly it is an improvement on things as they were. I will be frank with the Committee. There are differing opinions about it, but, frankly, I do not like this lump-sum business at all except in small cases where a small amount is involved and you can clear it off the books and do it fairly. It would be well in my judgment, to terminate, subject to those exceptions, the lump-sum system altogether and to provide for continuing allowances. That is what I personally would prefer, but I am afraid that I cannot suddenly pitch it into this temporary emergency legislation.

In the circumstances I hope that my hon. Friends will feel that they need not press the Amendment.

Mr. McEntee: The Home Secretary mentioned earlier that employers' liability was closely associated with workmen's compensation and that later on there would be a change-over because of the principles in "the Beveridge Report for social legislation. Now he has told us the reason why the children do not get any increase in the lump-sum is because they get it under social legislation. If that principle is to be continued, will it not be relieving employers entirely of the responsibility for providing compensation for workmen who are injured in their employment and transferring to the State the responsibility of the employers?

The Deputy-Chairman (Mr. Charles Williams): That point might come in somewhere in the Bill, but definitely it does not come in on this Amendment.

Mr. McEntee: I understand that it is not the Amendment but the Clause that we are discussing.

The Deputy-Chairman: No.

Mr. Foster: In view of the explanation which has been given by the Home Secretary, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment and to say that I am very glad indeed that he will consult Sir William Beveridge on this matter.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Foster: I beg to move, in page 3, line 28, at the end, to add:
(5) In paragraph (v) of subsection (2) of Section eight of the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1925 (which provides for reasonable expenses for medical attendance and burial) for the word 'fifteen,' there shall be substituted the word 'thirty.'
We do not feel that £15 to-day is adequate to meet the funeral expenses in the case where there are no dependants. I have many cases in mind where the funeral expenses may have reached even as much as £40. Some people may think that that is an extravagant amount in working-class homes, but working people, when there is a death in the family, generally like to give the deceased a decent burial. I do not think that it is possible to do that to-day for £15, and we are asking the Home Secretary whether he cannot raise it to £30.

Mr. Tom Brown: I wish to support the contention that has been put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Foster). The Home Secretary will appreciate that since the £15 was inserted in the 1925 Act there has £15 a considerable increase in all the fees that appertain to laying to rest men who have been killed in the pits, and I maintain that on economic grounds the figure mentioned in the Amendment should be conceded by the Home Secretary.

Mr. T. J. Brooks: If the Home Secretary feels that he is not able to adopt the amount of would he be good enough to say whether he could give a figure somewhat less than £30? I have had a good deal of experience of funerals where there have been no dependants, and it is not possible to give a Christian burial for £15. We do not want our people to be buried as paupers, and that is what the right hon. Gentleman will be doing if the present amount remains in the Bill. Costs have gone up tremendously. You cannot get a decent coffin to-day under £10 or £12, and where there is no family left it leaves somebody in debt if he has to help to pay for the burial. This is not right.

Mr. Peake: This is a matter which we discussed fully in the course of our meetings with the representatives of the Trades Union Congress. The figure of £15 which is operating to-day is the maximum for the funeral expenses where there are no dependants. It is suggested in the Amendment that that figure should be increased to a maximum of £30. I again hesitate to refer to the Beveridge Report, but that Report deals comprehensively with a proposal for funeral benefits, and while that Report stands before the country and the House and while discussions upon which proposals should be adopted are being undertaken by the Government, there did not seem to us to be a case for any alteration in the existing figure. The figure proposed by Sir William Beveridge in the case of adults for funeral benefit was £20. Most of the cases where there are no dependants and where this funeral benefit applies are cases of youths in the mining industry, and in respect of youths Sir William Beveridge's figure is something below £20. There is a sliding scale. The evidence before the Beveridge Committee on this point is interesting. It shows that in 1922, when the Departmental Committee on Industrial Assurance were sitting, the

cost of a funeral was given by the representatives of the Undertakers' Association as £15 in London for an adult and £13 in other industrial centres.

Mr. Foster: What sort of a funeral?

Mr. Peake: The hon. Member says, "What sort of a funeral?" There was further evidence before this Committee, it is stated by Sir William Beveridge, which shows that a great public authority, like that over which my right hon. Friend presided with such distinction for many years, provides, I am told, a very adequate funeral for the small figure of £7 10s. I am told that it is quite a good funeral for that figure.

Mr. Maxton: Does the right hon. Gentleman know what a bottle of whisky costs?

Mr. Peake: We were talking of funerals in London, not in Scotland. The discussions we had on this matter with the representatives of the Trades Union Congress led me to believe—I am not sure whether they were persuaded or not—that if we were to increase this overriding maximum figure at the present time, most of the benefit would go to the undertakers. The usual question when a burial has to take place is, "How much money are you insured for? How much money have you got?" The funeral is the same whether the insurance money is £10, £20 or £30. For that reason, and in view of the fact that the whole question of funeral benefit for everybody is now under consideration, we thought that we had better leave the figure where it is at the present time.

Mr. Foster: It is with regret that I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment, because I do not think a case has been made out against it. One could answer the Government's reply, but in view of the situation which presents itself I will withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Orders of the Day — CLAUSE 3.—(Consequential provisions.)

Mr. Peake: I beg to move, in page 3, line 41, after "In," to insert:
subsections (2) and (3) of section two of the said Act (which require, in the case of the redemption of any supplementary allowances, that regard shall be had to the circumstances of the case including the interests of any children in respect of whom allowances are payable) and in.


This is merely a drafting Amendment to provide that where a county court judge has to consider whether or not supplementary allowances should be redeemed he shall take into consideration not only the interests of the children under the 1940 Act but also the interests of the wife under the present Bill.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Orders of the Day — CLAUSE 4.—(Duration of Act.)

Mr. H. Morrison: I beg to move, in page 4, line 10, to leave out "thirtieth day of August," and to insert "twenty-ninth day of November."
This Amendment fixes the date of the commencement of the Act. Originally the day fixed was 30th August, in the hope that the Bill might be passed before the last Recess, but that did not prove to be possible, and, therefore, it has become necessary to put in another date. I confess that this date, 29th November, was fixed on the basis that we would have got the Bill through this House last week and through another place this week. Logically, the date ought to be put a little further ahead, but I think we will take the risk of leaving it where it is. It will run things rather tight for the people concerned, including the employers and the insurance people, but we will take the risk so long as it is understood that there may be some delay in catching up with arrears and making actual payments. I hope, therefore, that hon. Members will be kind should that happen. I do not wish to take advantage of the little excitement we had the other day and the delay which was thereby caused. I propose to leave the date as it is with grateful thanks to my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who ably held the fort after I had left the House on that historic occasion.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

The Deputy-Chairman: Does the hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Hogg) wish to move his new Clause (Provision for post-accident children)?

Mr. Hogg: It is quite clear that this Clause, if moved, must go the way of the

Amendment first on the Order Paper today. This Clause, however, is a little more all-embracing, because it was designed to cover the case not only of the natural child but also the adopted child and the stepchild and was also designed to get over the difficulty of the matter being res judicata by reason of prior proceedings in respect of the accident. It is quite clear that if you do not allow compensation to be paid in respect of post-accident children who are born when the parent is injured, you cannot allow it to stepchildren or adopted children either, and in those circumstances I do not think it would be right for me to move this new Clause.

Orders of the Day — NEW CLAUSE.—(Allowances to families not supported by injured men.)

(1) Where any allowance is paid under the provisions of this Act or under the Workmen's Compensation (Supplementary Allowances) Act, 1940, in respect of the wife or child of an injured workman, it shall be lawful for the wife of such workman to apply to the Court for an order that the said allowance should be paid to her, and where the Court is satisfied that such payment is reasonably necessary in order to give the wife and child respectively the benefit of such payment, the Court shall make an order accordingly.

(2) In proceedings under the above subsection the following provisions shall apply:

(a) The "court" shall mean the county court in which any proceedings in relation to the accident have been commenced or, where no proceedings have been commenced, the county court in which the workman resided.
(b) Where no proceedings have been commenced, an application may be made under subsection (1) of this section where any payment by way of settlement to the injured workman has been made, and in such event, it shall be presumed until the contrary is proved, that such payment included an element in respect of the employer's liability under this Act or the Workmen's Compensation (Supplementary Allowances) Act, 1940, and it shall be lawful for the court to apportion such element as between husband and wife, but not so as to affect the position of the employer.—[Mr. Hogg.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Hogg: I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
This Clause is designed to meet what is admitted to be an injustice under the present law. The right of compensation, including the right a wife's allowance, is the right of the male worker, notwithstanding that he does not pay the allow-


ance over to his wife. My hon. Friend the Member for Frome (Mrs. Tate) thought that this was one of the many injustices to her sex which ought to be remedied, and I think so too. The difficulty, which was mentioned by the Home Secretary on the Second Reading, was that it put too great an onus on the employer, and both of us appreciated that difficulty. On the other hand, we thought we had discovered a way out of the difficulty. We have, by this new Clause, made it a question simply between husband and wife as to whether the allowance should be paid to the wife and not to the husband and not one which necessarily affects the right of the employer at all. We think the Clause will not affect the employer disadvantageously in any respect. He only needs to be told on the court order, and then he sends the money to the wife instead of the husband. If he is not told by the court order, he is not affected and goes on paying to the husband. We do not feel that the Clause is administratively impossible to work.

Mr. Peake: My hon. Friend's Clause proposes that, where any allowance is paid under the provisions of either this Act or the 1940 Act, it shall be lawful for the wife of a workman to apply to the court for an order that the allowance shall be paid to her, and the court can, in those circumstances, make an Order that the payment shall be so made. I think my hon. Friend will admit that there is no precedent in any of our social insurance schemes for procedure of this kind. Then is no provision for a wife's or child's allowance, for example, in the case of a Service pension, to be paid over to the wife on behalf of herself or the child, nor is there such provision under the Unemployment Insurance Act. Hitherto, the broad view has been that you pay a sum, including the wife's and children's allowances, to the husband and that the question of how it is divided between them, and spent, must be a domestic one. I think there would be an objection for that reason to inserting this Clause in the Bill, which is only intended to be a temporary stop-gap. There is also a probable objection in principle to allocating, as it were, a small sum out of the total compensation payable and saying that that may be drawn by the wife. For instance, in short-term cases the married Man will get 5s. more than the single man.

I think that to assess the interest of the wife in the sum of 40s. at a figure of only 5s. is putting too low a figure upon the services which the wife renders to the home. I think it would be a mistake to say—and it might lead people to believe—that 5s. out of 40s. was the figure at which the state assessed a wife's services. It is clear that if she went to a court for a maintenance order because her husband was not supporting her, she would be allocated a substantially larger sum. Subsection (2, b) states:
… where any payment by way of settlement to the injured workman has been made … it shall be presumed … that such payment included an element in respect of the employers liability … for supplementary allowances … and it shall be lawful for the court to apportion such element as between husband and wife …
We have inserted in the Bill a provision that, before a weekly payment is redeemed by means of a lump sum, the court must have regard to the interests of the wife as well as to the interests of the child or children. This is an extension of the existing provision under the 1940 Act, and, therefore, before weekly payments, which include supplementary allowances, can be redeemed, the court is to have regard to the interest of the wife and child. So there is a safeguard against family allowances under this Act being redeemed for a lump sum and the husband, being a ne'er-do-well, spending the money. There is provision to compel the court to look at the circumstances of the family, and I think that perhaps with that explanation my hon. Friend will not press his Clause.

Mr. Hogg: It was not my intention to press this Clause on this occasion, and I shall, in fact, seek leave to withdraw it. My right hon. Friend's explanation is not altogether satisfactory, but it will be accepted in these circumstances. It is no objection to an Amendment to say that there is no precedent for it. It is a fact that Service pensions and allowances have given rise to similar injustices, but there is no reason for increasing the number of injustices. There is no doubt whatever that there are men who take the money they get for their wives and do not hand it over, and this is true of some children as well. [An HON. MEMBER: "Not many."] There may not be many, but it is surprising how many have come my way since I have become a lawyer. There must be a high


proportion of them living in my constituency. This Clause was designed to protect the wife and children against such a man.
It is said there is a danger that the wife's services might be rated too low if this Clause were included. I do not altogether agree with that. Where a wife and husband are living together with children an order such as is contemplated by this Clause would be a very great rarity. This Clause is not designed for that at all, nor is it designed to take the place of a maintenance order from a police court, but it is designed to see that a husband who is not living with his wife and children should not commit fraud on the public and on his wife and children. The limited order we set up was simply confined to the money he received in respect of his wife and children. The other part of the Clause did not refer only to lump-sum payments, because it referred equally to settlement by way of weekly payments. It would be possible under the existing law for a workman to enter into an agreement with his employer for, say, 30s. a week, to take the lot himself and give nothing to his wife and children. The object of paragraph (b) was to prevent that by presuming against him, but not against the employer, that part of the 30s. was designed for his wife and children. In the circumstances and with that explanation, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Clause.

Motion and Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Orders of the Day — SCHEDULE—(Portions of Section One of the Workmen's Compensation (Supplementary Allowances) Act, 1940, as amended by Section One of this Act.)

Amendment made:

In page 5, line 30, at the end, insert:
Provided that a child who,—

(i) has attained the age of fifteen years; and
(ii) was, when he attained that age, a child receiving full-time instruction in a school,

shall be treated for the purposes of paragraph (c) of this subsection as if he did not attain that age until the date on which he ceases to be a child receiving full-time instruction as aforesaid or the thirty-first day of July next following the day on which he attains the age of sixteen years, whichever is the earlier date."—[Mr. Peake.]

Schedule, as amended, agreed to.

Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended, considered.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."

Mr. Ellis Smith: We have been acting under instructions to-day, in accordance with trade union democracy, to facilitate the passage of this Bill, and my hon. Friends have loyally abided by that decision. I was to make a few observations on the Bill on behalf of the people I am connected with, but another hon. Member, in accordance with his usual practice, took advantage of Clause 1 in order to make the observations himself. On behalf of our party and the movement outside, I want to say that we welcome the improvements which are contained in this Bill. The trade union movement and those who until recently were acting in local areas, like my hon. Friends the Members for Ince (Mr. T. Brown) and Wigan (Mr. Foster), in particular welcome these relative improvements. At the same time the Home Secretary in particular and the Government in general will be aware of the righteous indignation arising from the experiences of my hon. Friends, to which expression was given during the early part of the Committee stage, and it was in answer to that that the Home Secretary said that the Government were considering the position and had decided as soon as possible to introduce a comprehensive Measure. We hope it will be treated as a matter of urgency, because although we accept this Bill, it does not deal with fundamental grievances that arise out of injuries received in industry, and I would remind the House that as a result of the developments of industry more and more of our people are suffering from industial diseases.
The whole House joined a few weeks ago in pressing the Government to bring about big improvements in the administration of the Ministry of Pensions. It was an example of what can be done when the House correctly reflects the feeling of the country, and just as improvements were brought about in the payments to men and women who have served in the Armed Forces, so we believe there ought to be similar improvements in the payments and conditions of


those who are our industrial soldiers and have suffered injury in their employment. I represent an area which probably has suffered more as a result of industrial diseases than any other area in this country, and it is on behalf of the people there that I am asking that the introduction of this comprehensive Measure should be regarded as a matter of urgency. Meanwhile, we welcome the relative improvements brought about by this Bill, and hope the Third Reading will be agreed to, and that it will be sent to another place as soon as possible in order that our people may get the benefits.

Mr. Tom Brown: I want to put a point of view similar to that of the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith). I hope that the placid atmosphere to-day will also prevail during the discussions when the comprehensive Bill comes forward. One thing I should like to say is that I hope that tire comprehensive legislation of which we have had a vision to-day will cover those workmen who were injured prior to Jane, 1924. There are a tremendous number in the coalfields who were injured from 1906 to 1924.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Charles Williams): This is the Third Reading of the Bill, and we can discuss only the Bill itself. I do not want to be hard on the hon. Member, but I would ask him not to develop a point which is really outside the scope of the Third Reading.

Mr. Brown: I bow to your Ruling, and I will reserve my remarks for a later period.

Mr. Tinker: Now that we have reached the Third Reading, I should like to say that it has been a hard battle and that we have said many hard things, but it must be remembered that we come from the mining industry and that ours is a hard life. As miners' agents we have had experience of accidents, and when these Measures come before the House we have in our minds what we have gone through and all the accidents we have had to encounter. That vision lies before us, and it makes us warm and heated in our endeavours to do something for our people. The right hon. Gentleman the

Under-Secretary will appreciate this, because he is a coal-owner and he knows our feelings. The other night he handled a very difficult situation in a very able manner, cleared off the opposition in a very decent way and got out of the difficulty very well. I did not want to lose this Bill, although I did want to secure better conditions for our people, and if we have not got all we desired, still there will be a big improvement in the lot of our people. Our demands were made in order that those who are preparing the comprehensive Measure should know what our feelings are, because there will be a bonnier fight altogether if we do not then get some of the things which we have advocated during the discussion on this Bill. I welcome the Third Reading.

Mr. Foster: There will be thousands of workmen who will welcome the increased benefits given by this Bill, but there will also be thousands of workmen who will be disappointed. I regret that we were not able to secure some of the Amendments put down by myself and other hon. Members which were designed so to improve the Bill that some of the bottom dogs might share in this £4,000,000. Having said that I would like to pay my tribute to the Home Secretary and the Under-Secretary for the courtesy they have shown to me in the Debate. I have refrained from entering upon any personalities. I always think that if a Member has to build up his case by attacking individuals he has a very poor case indeed. His case should rest upon the facts and the arguments which he can put forward.

Mr. Hogg: I wish to say a few words from this side of the House. The hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith), in his Second Reading speech, expressed himself as apprehensive about the future. I hope that, whatever else may have occurred, these discussions will have shown that a very great advance is now possible with a Measure which would be quite uncontroversial and receive no kind of opposition from this side of the House. A second thing I should like to say is that if a comprehensive Measure is contemplated to deal with workmen's compensation as distinct from general social insurance, I hope it will take a look at some of the general features of employers' liability generally, because there are certain other things which require to be done.

Mr. Peake: I am obliged to my hon. Friends in all quarters of the House for facilitating the passage of this Bill into law to-day. This is the third Measure of workmen's compensation since the war with which I have had the good or ill fortune to be associated, and the result of those three Measures has been, I think, a considerable advance in the benefits which injured people obtain. Broadly speaking, the result of the three Measures is that the total payments of compensation will be 75 per cent. higher than before the war and that the increase will be spread more according to the needs of individuals than they were under the old flat rate system. Many of my hon. Friends opposite have knowledge and practical experience of workmen's compensation, and for this reason I always listen to what they say with interest, because I hope, like my right hon. Friend, to be associated with a comprehensive Measure which will take the place of the present antiquated system. If, therefore, I can gather the general sense of the House with a view to seeing how far agreement exists, it is a matter of great interest to me in my work upon the new system.
A certain amount of heat came into our Debate last week on this matter. I quite understand how that occurs. It is not easy to discuss these matters in a dispassionate way, especially as so many hon. Members opposite have seen injured victims carried out of the pit or factory. I was also formerly associated with the mining industry. I know something of its problems. I have been round the hospitals and seen men, young men, who will never work again, with such injuries as a fractured spine. I can assure my hon. Friends opposite that my sympathy with those cases is as great as theirs. I am sure that if we can discuss a new scheme in a dispassionate atmosphere, such as we have had in the House to-day, we can frame something which will be of lasting benefit to the unfortunate victims of industrial accidents.

Question, "That the Bill be now read the Third Time," put, and agreed to.

Bill read the Third time, and passed.

PARLIAMENT (ELECTIONS AND MEETING) BILL

As amended, considered.

CLAUSE 6.—(Business Premises Register.)

Major Sir Derrick Gunston: I beg to move, in page 6, line 5, at the end, to insert:
Provided also that it shall be the duty of the inspector of taxes for the appropriate area to send within the prescribed time to each person assessed by him under Schedule D a copy of such form and to draw his attention to the provisions of this subsection.
On the Committee stage the other day we had a Debate upon a somewhat similar Amendment, which the Government were unable to accept. The Under-Secretary gave, as his reason for not accepting the Amendment, which incidentally commends itself to a large section of this House, that it would leave out certain people and would go to other people who were not qualified. This Amendment is an attempt to meet the objections which were raised by the Under-Secretary. The Inspector of Taxes will know who is assessed under Schedule D, and it will be easy for him to send a copy of the form mentioned in the Bill to the electors who are assessed under Schedule D. Therefore we do not leave anybody out.

Mr. Ammon: On a point of Order. Was not this point decided by a Division of the House on the last occasion when we discussed this matter? The Amendment differs only in its wording from that which we already considered; is it possible for an hon. Member upon the Report stage to reintroduce an Amendment which has been defeated upon the Committee stage?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Charles Williams): It may be a mistake on my part for having called it. Sir Derrick Gunston.

Mr. Ammon: Surely that is an extraordinary Ruling. If a Member of the House draws attention to something which is irregular and out of Order, and this is half admitted, can it then be imposed upon the House?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I am informed that although it may seem to be the same Amendment, it is actually slightly different.

Sir D. Gunston: I assure my hon. Friend that this is a different Amendment. The other dealt with the rating authority, while this proposes that it shall be the Inspector of Taxes. I assure the Under-Secretary that nobody will be left out. The form will be sent to people entitled to vote. It would create disappointment if they got the form and found they were not entitled to vote. I do not see any objection to putting on the form that the form was sent merely to call attention to the provisions of the Bill. I think that could be done without any difficulty. I would remind hon. Members opposite that we are not discussing in any way business firms, although some of my hon. Friends thought the other day that we were. We are merely discussing the best means of acquainting business men with the fact that they are entitled to this vote. The hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) may not approve of the business vote, but I am sure, he being a fair-minded man, that he would be the last to try to prevent the knowledge being given to any man that he could vote. In a speech the other day the Home Secretary himself paid a great tribute to the small busines man and said he did not want to see the small business man swallowed up by the big, bad wolf of business. We want to safeguard the small business man. Under the Bill the register will be very much larger than it has ever been before, and we feel that the business man who is entitled to a vote should be so acquainted.
There is another fact. It was very difficult to deal with all our difficulties the other day, but to-day we have the very good fortune of having the Home Secretary on the Front Bench. I congratulate him on recovering from his indisposition. I know that he in no way opposes the small shopkeeper and small business man and does not want him to be swallowed up by big business, but both to be swallowed up by the State. Personally, I should not mind whether I was swallowed up by a red or a blue wolf. He must recognise that this business vote does exist, and he would be the last man to want to prevent people from using it. It may be that the words of the Amendment are not the best possible ones. I appeal to the Home Secretary, if he cannot accept these words, to meet us by considering the matter very carefully

to see whether he can substitute another form of words in another place. We do not want to divide the House again or the Government to run any narrow risks. It is in the friendliest spirt that I move this Amendment.

Lady Apsley: I beg to second the Amendment. I do so with the greatest, pleasure and sincerity, speaking on behalf of the small business people scattered throughout the country, particularly in the big towns and ports which have suffered so severely under war conditions. I feel that this Amendment would be greatly welcomed by them. It would assist them, for once in a while. I urge my right hon. Friend to do his very best to meet us over this matter.

Mr. Maxton: The hon. and gallant Member did me the honour of saying that I am a fair-minded man. I hope I am. I have always regarded him as a fair man. I listened the other day to the discussion of an Amendment which was not very dissimilar from the one that we are discussing to-day. I cannot see why it is considered necessary to make this special application to one section of the community. I am a plural voter. I think it is all wrong, but I am, and obviously will exercise my plural vote. My second vote is on the ground of my academic distinction, of which the hon. and gallant Member may not be aware, but which is very real. Because I have an additional vote, do I need a special provision to remind me of the fact that I have a privilege which is not available to the general community? As I understood the hon. and gallant Member, the section of the community about which he spoke is regarded as being somewhat superior to the average manual worker. Is it necessary to tell these people that they have rights under the law and it is not necessary to tell an unskilled labourer in an engineering works?

Sir D. Gunston: Under the Bill there will be a larger register. The business vote is part of it. There will be a new form of register, and many shopkeepers will not know where they are. Much of this information would go to them.

Mr. Maxton: The point is that they are citizens the same as the rest of us, and they should know what is going on in the community and be aware of their rights. I do not think the point is a big one or


that it affects the small shopkeepers. In my own division the small shopkeeper usually has a residential vote. It is not the small shopkeeper in my division who would be affected by this Amendment but the large absentee owner, who has residential qualifications in some more agreeable area. I do not want owners of big business to be able to come into the Bridgeton Division to vote during the General Election. It is wasting the time of the nation for them to do so, when they can cast their votes with more prospect of making them effective in some other division. It seems to me that the reply of the Home Secretary which was made last week is completely adequate, namely, that for all this means from the point of view of the number of people concerned it is unfair to add to the already complicated job we are putting on to the local officers charged with the preparation of this register which is frankly admitted to be an emergency register for war purposes.
I do not think the hon. and gallant Member should worry so much about the possibility of those people being disfranchised. I am surprised—and this is what really brought me to my feet—that he went out representing the House to Newfoundland and spent three months investigating the problems of democracy out there, has come back, and, so far as I know, he is not disturbed about the fact that people in Newfoundland have not got a vote at all, He comes back here without any propaganda for the restoration of votes to the people of Newfoundland, yet here he is shouting about securing a second vote for people who have already got one on the basis of their residence. It seems to me a great inconsistency, which I am surprised to find in the character and mentality of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. I think that no injustice is being done if the Home Secretary continues in his refusal to make special provision for this particular section of the community.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Herbert Morrison): I should like to express my appreciation to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Thornbury (Sir D. Gunston) for his kindly reference to my slight indisposition; I am glad to say that I feel much better. It was very kind of him to have said that. I thank him also for the friendly and considerate tone of the speech he has made. Everybody seems to be on

his best behaviour to-day, both on the Workmen's Compensation Bill and this one, and I welcome the change, being a man of peace myself. There is a great deal to be said for having a row; it is often conducive to friendliness thereafter, I find, in the House of Commons. On this subject now before the House my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary had quite a rough time the other day, and I have to thank him again very warmly for the stout defence he made and the ability with which he conducted the Committee stage of the Bill. Some of the things that were said were rather severe. The hon. Member for the Hulme Division (Sir J. Nall) said:
… this is one more of those dirty tricks we are getting from certain Members of the Government. …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd November, 1943; col. 730, Vol. 393.]
I think that was a pointed reference to me, and that the hon. Member was getting, near the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. A. Bevan) in the vigour of his expressions, which I think was rather to be deprecated.
This is a problem of real practical difficulty, and it has so far defeated me to find a solution which Members on this side would like, not through any lack of wish to uphold the law as it is, even though I might like to alter it, but because of the practical difficulties. I may say also that it has defied the solution they would wish not only from me. I admit that I may be a subject of suspicion, because on the merits of the business vote everybody knows where my political party stands and where I stand. I make no secret that I think it is a difficult thing to defend. But I start on the basis that it is part of the law, and that it is my duty as Home Secretary and the Minister concerned to facilitate the operation of this law fairly. I can assure the hon. and gallant Member that I am absolutely genuine about that. If ever we want to alter this law it will be for Parliament to alter it in a straightforward, upright way. It is not for me to evade it by creating administrative difficulties or by administrative evasions. I hope the House will agree that I would not do that. But it really is a very difficult matter. We are basing this Bill on National Registration. While the National Registration people can easily ascertain who are the adult popula-


tion over 21 years of age, and where they live, and they can be classified in constituencies by the National Registration and the electoral registration officers between them, when it comes to trying to find out who is entitled to the local government vote or the business premises vote the National Registration machinery simply does not help us at all.
Then there is the problem that if the business premises register were to be compiled, we should be back to the ordinary system which it is the purpose of this Bill to avoid, substituting instead another system based upon the electoral registration organisation. To set the local authorities or the electoral registration officers on the enormous task of an extensive canvass would involve a considerable amount of man-power in respect of by-elections, that is to say, the stage 1 class of election. It would set them the impossible task of ascertaining and compiling the register between the initiation of the election and the making up of the register itself. Everybody knows that the local authorities are very heavily driven, that their staff position is exceedingly difficult, and it really would not be possible to impose that job on them, because if the electoral registration officer is himself to be made responsible for the compilation of a register we must be sure that he can do it. If he fails, if he leaves a number of people off for some reason or equally he puts some on who have no right to be on, he is open to very serious criticism from one quarter or another.
I assure the House that it would not be practical politics to present the electoral registration officer with the problem of compiling this register between the intiation of the election at a by-election and the publication of the register on the date we are proposing to appoint for the purpose. Between now and stage 2—not a war-time General Election but a post-war General Election—it may be possible that something additional may be found practicable, and I assure my hon. and gallant Friend and those associated with him that if between now and stage 2, that is the General Election stage, we find a means whereby the administration can be improved and tightened up, believe me, I will not hesitate to see that is done, so long as in the meantime Parliament has not altered the law about the business electoral qualification.

Major Lloyd: The right hon. Gentleman has suggested that stage 2 would be the General Election stage. Is it not possible that stage 1 might also include a General Election?

Mr. Morrison: It is possible of course, but I thought I made myself clear. It is possible that there might be a wartime General Election in the sense that it would be administratively practicable under this Bill—we all have views as to whether it should happen, most of us think not. I admit that if that happened I could not help the House very much on the point except as far as it is covered by the general observations I shall make presently. I admit that in a war-time General Election we should be in much the same difficulty as I am in about wartime Parliamentary by-elections. The proposal before the House is a rather different one. It raises practically the same principle as was raised in the Amendment on the Committee stage. That Amendment would have used the machinery of rating. This uses the machinery of national taxation. I think the present idea is less practicable than the other was because rating is more relevant to the matter than imperial taxation. Moreover the rating officers live in the locality—they are usually officers of the local authority—and for this reason could probably handle the matter better.
I do not blame hon. Members for being ingenious in trying to find a solution, but will give the House some facts which I think indicate that the proposal really would not work. The Inland Revenue—and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer takes the same view—do not like the idea of the officers concerned with tax inspection and collection being concerned with electoral machinery at all. They think it is a strange field, in which to bring them and they would sooner that they were out of it. Let us see what the facts are, and how far this Amendment gets away from the field of qualifications. Out of a total electorate in England and Wales of some 28,000,000, it is estimated that the total business premises electorate on the existing basis is 354,864, and of that number 214,932 qualify by their own occupation of the business premises, that is to say, they are not qualified merely by virtue of the independent qualification of husband or wife. The total of persons assessed to Schedule D on the last return was some


800,000. Therefore the first thing that would happen would be that an enormous number of people, somewhere between 450,000 and 580,000, with no right to be registered at all would be getting these particulars about the business vote, and the facilities for registering. Moreover, there may be on the other hand some people, I do not say many, who because of unusually low incomes are, although in occupation of business premises, not assessed to Schedule D at all and would not get the form.
I think there is nothing more annoying to the average citizen than to find that some Government official, especially if he is a tax gatherer, has been scattering forms to hundreds of thousands of people who have no concern whatever in the matter with which the form deals, and I can imagine irate questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer asking him what he meant by distributing these forms to hundreds of thousands who were not concerned. While it would be right and just that my hon. and gallant Friend should be the Chancellor of the Exchequer who had to answer the questions which his Amendment might promote, nevertheless I cannot be certain of that. Otherwise if only to witness his embarrassment I would be happier at accepting the Amendment. But there would be great irritation and considerable criticism of the scandalous waste of effort. Other people who would not get the form at all but who ought to get it—I admit the number would be quite limited—would be still more annoyed. But even if all the people who ought to get the letter or form did get it in addition to all those who ought not to get it, there is no guarantee that although they got it they would do anything about it. It is an unhappy fact in the experience of us all that the electorate is rather apathetic, especially when it comes to doing anything, even if it is the getting of the vote. Each party believes that its own supporters are the most apathetic, but the fact is that we have all got to lead them by the hand and take great care with them, or democracy would not work. As I say, there is no guarantee whatever that when the form or the letter has been delivered the elector will take any notice of it, and I think that the value of this from the point of view of hon. Members is being very much exaggerated.
The other point is that the taxing officers could not, I am afraid, classify

the constituencies. I do not know that that would be fatal, but I am sure that officers of taxes know nothing about constituency boundaries and could only send a very general statement wholesale all over the country asking you to apply to your local registration officer or what not and giving you that kind of advice. Honestly, I do not think the scheme would work. I think it would be largely ineffective. After all, it was not I who invented the idea that the business electors should claim. It was the inter-party or non-party Departmental Committee which recommended that business electors should claim, because they could not see any other alternative. This was a very good Committee, representative of pretty well all the political parties in this House. In addition, we had on it the principal agents of the political parties, including the principal agent of the Conservative Central Office, some expert registration officers and officers of the Home Office and Scottish Office. You could not have had a more representative or competent Committee or one in which all the interests concerned were more fully represented, and they did suggest that this was the best way of doing it.
Having said that and returned a negative reply to my hon. and gallant Friend, which I do with no pleasure, because, as I said, my business is to see that the law is carried out, let me add this. We are promoting an Amendment which will be helpful to some extent, particularly in the case of the husband who is absent during the war. We are making it possible for the husband to claim on behalf of the wife or the wife to claim on behalf of the husband, and the wife being at home while the husband is at the war will be able to claim in her own respect and in his as well. I think as far as it goes that will not be unhelpful and should be conducive to the operation of the law.
The next point about which I will give an undertaking is this. We will see that there is suitable publicity. For instance, as by-elections occur, we will have suitable publicity immediately advising the potential business voter how to set about making his claim and tell him all about it. As I have said, at the post-war General Election, assuming that the law remains as it is, we will do what we can to be even more forthcoming.
Finally, may I say this? I hope the House will forgive my talking about party machines. They are things that we all use, but somehow or other we seem to think it indelicate to talk about them. As one who has had something to do with them, I perhaps feel more affection for them than hon. Members who have had nothing much to do with them but who have got the benefit of them and who feel at the same time that they cannot talk freely about them. Anyhow the organisation that is concerned with this matter is the party machine. I do not think that those of us who think that the business vote is on the whole a liability, like the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) and myself, will be unduly excited and get our party machines going, but others like my Noble Friend the Member for Central Bristol (Lady Apsley) and my hon. Friend the Member for the Abbey Division (Sir H. Webbe), who is not here to-day but whose interest in the matter I fully appreciate and understand, will have a great interest in seeing that the business electors are put on the register, and from their point of view I do not blame them.
If I may give advice to Conservative Members on how to go about this—I do not know that I should, but I just want to manifest my complete impartiality and good will on this subject—I should say set the party machine on this job at once. Let them take their time. There is no great hurry as long as you do not expect a by-election soon. Let them accumulate a list of potential business voters. There is no reason why that should not be done quietly and unobtrusively and steadily straight away in the constituencies. When the election comes they will then have a substantially complete list of the potential business voters of the constituency. This is what I should do if I were running the Conservative Central Office, which Heaven forbid. They know as much about electioneering as I do—nearly—and they have done very well on many occasions, but not always. Having accumulated these lists of potential business voters, when the election comes you can set about canvassing them and seeing that they fill up the form and make the application to be registered. I will see to it as far as the Home Office and the local registration officers are concerned, again on the basis that my busi-

ness is to administer the law and not to interfere with it once it exists, that the Home Office and the local registration officers do everything possible to see that proper official co-operation exists between the registration officers and the party organisations, all or any of them, so that the work of the Party organisation in getting their people registered can be done with all smoothness and alacrity. The forms can be available, and we can arrange it so that the Party organisations—whichever one of them is concerned or all of them—can have from the electoral registration officers and the Home Office proper facilities to enable them as smoothly and swiftly as possible to do the jobs which I think they will have to do in the circumstances.
Having said that, I think I have manifested a fair spirit, especially as it is well known that I would have other opinions about the merits of the business vote. But it is there, it is the law, and my business is to see it operating and not to make any trouble about it. Therefore I suggest that it would not be wise to press this Amendment. It is an Amendment which does not stand up to factual examination. I have given my hon. and gallant Friend free expert professional advice on how his Party machine should work. I have given an undertaking that as far as official co-operation is concerned we will not be standoffish but will be as helpful as we properly can be. The Government intend to do what they can to be fair in this matter; I would ask hon. Members to accept my bona fides and in the circumstances I hope they will see their way not to press the Amendment.

Major Lloyd: While I have not found myself in agreement with all that my right hon. Friend has said, I must say that after his speech I feel considerably happier than I did during the Committee stage of the Bill. He has certainly gone a long way towards meeting our very genuine and sincere apprehensions that individuals who were qualified as voters for business premises were—perhaps unwittingly—being handicapped under this Bill. They still will be handicapped to some extent. I was particularly interested in the right hon. Gentleman's point that there would not be time in the first stage, to set up machinery on the lines that my hon. Friends and I are advocating in this Amendment or those advocated in other


Amendments of a different character in the Committee stage. I appreciate that there may be substance in what my right hon. Friend said in answer to our contentions on that; I also appreciated immensely his, indication of the steps that would be taken in the second stage, which is, after all, far more fundamental because the first stage may not involve a General Election but merely a by-election, and the second stage is certain to involve a General Election in any case. I hope that by that stage my right hon. Friend will have been enabled to do something even further than he has indicated to-day and in taking practical steps to give the business voter better facilities for reminder, in order that he will be under no handicap whatever.
To a large extent my misgivings and apprehensions are met by the assurance of the right hon. Gentleman that he will do everything possible to give publicity to the business voter's entitlement to vote and how he can claim and so on. If those assurances are implemented, as I am sure they will be, in full measure and running over, as it were, I would feel considerably happier than I did before. It was because I felt that the business voter was not going to get the fullest opportunity of learning his position, and the fullest encouragement to make his application, that I had misgivings. My right hon. Friend gave some excellent advice, as from an expert on the subject, on how the Conservative and Unionist Party should run its party machine in connection with this matter. In the second or subsequent stages the Conservative and Unionist Party will need no assistance or indeed advice in this connection, because it will have, as all other parties will have, its agents and its full staffs and its machinery. But in the first stage about which I am still concerned—though as I say I appreciate the arguments of my right hon. Friend—no political party will have facilities to operate this machinery or to follow the advice of my right hon. Friend. With the best will in the world, however perfect the advice, it could not be followed because the agents are not there. Many constituencies have no agencies. Many organisations have honoured the party truce, which all of us on this side have kept, so strictly that they are almost shut down. My own organisation is almost non-existent. I have no agent and the same applies to

large numbers of my hon. Friends and no doubt to hon. Members on both sides of the House. Therefore, the advice of my right hon. Friend, that the party machinery should undertake this very complex and difficult work at any rate in its initial stage cannot be followed. I wish, generally, to thank my right hon. Friend for the way in which he has taken our point of view in this matter. We have been very genuine and serious about it, and I think, on the whole, he has been sympathetic towards it. I only regret that he was not able to make a further concession on the first stage. I hope we can rely on every possible step being taken in the second stage to ensure that, by some means or other, not necessarily by the method advocated in this Amendment, what is behind our point of view will be fully and amply met.

Sir D. Gunston: Will my right hon. Friend look at the recommendation of the Committee, in regard to the second stage, that a notice should be sent out, and set up some machinery to notify people on that stage?

Mr. Morrison: I have forgotten the exact point, but I will certainly look into it sympathetically.

Sir D. Gunston: May I thank the right hon. Gentleman for what he has said, and for his advice? I hope that if I fight a by-election one day he will be seconded to help me. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Home Security (Miss Wilkinson): I beg to move, in page 6, line 5, at the end, to insert:
Where a husband and wife are qualified to be registered in respect of any business premises by virtue of the foregoing provisions of this section, the said application may be made by either of them on behalf of both of them.
The position in regard to this matter was fully gone into in the previous discussion, and I do not think there is anything more to be said.

Mr. Ammon: This Amendment cannot be allowed to pass without protest, because it is like the one which was defeated on the last occasion. The House will notice with what pertinacity our friends on the other side pursue every opportunity of entrenching


themselves in a position of privilege. Unfortunately, the Home Secretary was absent through sickness last time, and did not see the exhibition we had here, when suddenly those benches filled up as the result of an organised plan to defeat the Government. It was only Members on this side who saved the Government from a heavy defeat. When Members on this side are deeply moved by great social and humanitarian questions, it is a very different matter from what it is when people in a privileged position are concerned. My right hon. Friend has gone out of his way to placate hon. Members opposite, which he has never done for hon. Members on this side.

Mr. H. Morrison: I have been doing exactly the same thing to-day on the Workmen's Compensation Bill. The continuity of the two Bills to-day is an amazing example of Parliamentary harmony.

Mr. Ammon: An amazing example of change of front on both sides since the matter was last discussed. There is only a slight alteration in this Amendment as compared with the other. They are now being given half of what they lost on the vote. It is specifically set down in the records of the House that what they asked for then was negatived on the voices. Now they are being—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Milner): The hon. Member must not go further into what has happened. There is an Amendment on the Paper which has been moved. Perhaps he will address himself to that.

Mr. Ammon: My right hon. Friend has endeavoured to help the people on that side, and now we find ourselves in this position. I know that it is useless; otherwise, I would divide the House on the matter. This Amendment raises precisely the same question as was raised in the other. It is a question of whether people should make application for their votes, as the Committee decided that they should. The Government, after the promoters of that Amendment have been defeated, have gone out of their way to retain part of the privilege which the Committee thought they should not have. I make this protest, in order that it shall be on record that we object to such treatment, which, coming from such a source, we should not have expected.

Mr. H. Morrison: I do not quite follow my hon. Friend's grievance on the point. There was a difficult situation in the House the other day, and it is true that the Government would have been in difficulties had it not been for Labour and Liberal support in the Division Lobby. I appreciate that, although I am sure that the votes on both sides were given in conviction. It is true that the Government sometimes get saved the other way, as we were on the Workmen's Compensation Bill—although the revolt was not so great perhaps on that occasion. All that we have done to-day is that my hon. Friend has moved his Amendment and I in courteous terms have replied. There is nothing strange about that. That often happens in Parliament, but I do not think I should pursue this question. I gather that you are getting rather anxious, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

Sir D. Gunton: I should just like to pour oil on the troubled waters between the Home Secretary and the Labour Party. The Under-Secretary said that he would accept the Amendment before the other Amendment was withdrawn. There is no question of the Government giving way to pressure.

Mr. Ammon: I want to get that technical point right.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Member cannot make a second speech.

Mr. Ammon: Surely I can correct a statement which is not accurate in regard to my speech.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: If it is just a matter of correction.

Mr. Ammon: The Amendment was not withdrawn last time; it was actually defeated on a vote.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. H. Morrison: I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."
I have to acquaint the House that His Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Bill, gives His Consent, as far as His Majesty's Prerogative is concerned, that this House may do therein as they shall think fit.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read the Third time, and passed.

PRICE CONTROL (REGULATION OF DISPOSAL OF STOCKS) BILL [Lords].

Considered in Committee.

[Mr. CHARLES WILLIAMS in the Chair.]

CLAUSE 1.—(Licences for authorizing regulation of disposal of stocks.)

Major Lyons: I beg to move, in page 1, line 13, to leave out "authorising," and to insert "permitting."
It will be recalled that when this Bill was discussed the other day in a very conciliatory introduction, my hon. and gallant Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, who is not here at the moment, said in effect that it was merely of a permissive nature and would not weaken or restrict the position of a trader. It would merely allow him, if he wished, to confine certain kinds of sales to certain people. This is a Bill which nobody seems to like, and which the House could have done very well without. From the information which reaches me, traders do not get from the Board of Trade the assistance which they should get. I would like it made quite clear that this is put forward as a permissive Bill. In that case I can see no reason why the word "permitting" should not be inserted. With the word "authorising," I think it would be within the power of the Board of Trade to issue an authorisation which would be tantamount to a direction. Experience of the administration of the Act which this Bill seeks to amend has shown that when the trader has come to the Board of Trade and asked for help and guidance the Board of Trade has said, "It is not for us to do that, but for the courts." I hope the House will insist that this Bill shall be purely permissive, so that we shall not be faced with a situation in which the Board of Trade can issue when it likes an authorisation which will be tantamount to a direction.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Captain Waterhouse): I should like to answer one remark which was made by my hon. and gallant Friend. He said that many traders went to the Board of Trade for help and advice, and were turned empty away. That is a very hard accusation, and I believe it to be generally an inaccurate accusation. It is

generally true that our task is not to interpret the law, but I am sure that my hon. and gallant Friend cannot fairly say that the traders who approach the Board of Trade for advice are on the whole treated in anything but a helpful way. I am advised that "authorised" is a neater legal phrase, but my hon. and gallant Friend is probably as good a judge of legal phrases as anybody else, and, therefore, if he likes the word "permitted" better, I am only too glad to accept the Amendment.

Major Lyons: I desire to thank by hon. and gallant Friend and the Board of Trade for their kindness in meeting me. When I say that a large number of persons have been turned away by the Board of Trade, I speak for the people who have come to me, and not of the generality of cases. I should be very happy to supply my hon. and gallant Friend with the names of some of the persons.

Amendment agreed to.

Major Lyons: I desire to move that a certain two lines of Clause 1 be omitted so that the Clause would apply merely to retail traders.

The Deputy-Chairman: May I ask what Amendment the hon. and gallant Member is moving? The one I called stands in the names of Mr. Etherton and others, to leave out "or otherwise."

Major Lyons: I thought I was right in saying that the words "or otherwise" would bring in more than retail traders.

The Deputy-Chairman: Is the hon. and gallant Member moving that?

Major Lyons: I thought I was right in pointing out that when the Minister explained the Bill on the Second Reading he said it was wanted to cover retail traders in general.

The Deputy-Chairman: There is a second Amendment on the Paper, standing in the name of Mr. Etherton and others. When the hon. Gentleman rose I thought he intended to speak on the Amendment to leave out "or otherwise."

Major Lyons: That is what I was doing. I understand that these words "or otherwise" are put in to extend the number of persons who would come within the purview of this Bill. My only object in rising was to say that in view of what was said on Second Reading, if the hon.


and gallant Gentleman is in a position to say that the same considerations apply right through the transactions, I will not move the Amendment.

The Deputy-Chairman: The hon. and gallant Member must move if he wants the right to reply.

Major Lyons: I beg to move, in page line 14, to leave out "or otherwise."
I hope my hon. and gallant Friend will give us some explanation of the matter.

Captain Waterhouse: I am not absolutely clear what my hon. and gallant Friend objects to. These words are put in to enable us to permit certain goods to be disposed of by manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers in accordance with the licences we grant. To give a specific example in view of possible necessities in bombed areas we asked wholesalers and others—and they were good enough to comply with our request—to hold considerable stocks of essential household goods in different parts of the country so that after an air raid it would be possible for them to rush down essential pots and pans and clothing and that sort of thing to the area in which a raid had occurred. I am advised that it is desirable to include these words "or otherwise" so that, for example, the licences we grant may operate at a particular time—that is so that the licences should apply not only to a class of persons and to certain goods but to the time at which those goods may be sold, and should apply to manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers.

Mr. Rhys Davies: Does that mean that a retailer now has no power to sell goods to those people who have suffered in bombed areas?

Captain Waterhouse: Yes, indeed, he has power to sell them, but the point is that he cannot at present refuse to sell them to anybody who comes along. What we want to do is to provide that, for the time being, a retailer may say: "I am not going to supply these special things to ordinary customers. I am going to reserve them for poor people who have been bombed out of their houses." This Clause will permit retailers to do that without being in jeopardy under Section 9 of the 1941 Act.

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: I must say quite frankly and openly to the Parliamentary Secretary that although I am not of a suspicious turn of mind as a rule and not one who always mistrusts Government Departments or Ministers, I cannot understand the reason for introducing this Bill in the fifth year of war when we have got the better of the Hun and the Nazi and the bombing plane. We know that cities and towns in this country have been devastated and thousands of people made homeless, but for the last two years we have had no very terrible happenings as regards air-raid damage. Generally speaking, people in this country have begun to recognise that we are on top and that we can meet almost any eventuality which arises as the result of air-raid damage. I think the misgivings and fears of my hon. and gallant Friend arise because he thinks that this Clause as it is drafted will give powers to people other than retailers.
The original idea, I think, was that it should apply only to retailers. I cannot understand why it should be necessary to give these powers to manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, factors and all kinds of people. The Minister's statement the other day was very brief; indeed, it was a pathetic case. Perhaps if the gentlemen advising him could come here and tell us the position, they might be able to give us added reasons. I have no doubt the Parliamentary Secretary did his best, but I would ask those hon. Members who are here, small though the number is, whether they are fully convinced that the only reason for bringing in such a Measure as this is the fear of Doncaster, Wigan, Leeds, Bristol or some other town being badly damaged by an air raid. It just does not ring true. I put it to the Parliamentary Secretary that this Clause, as it stands, will permit something far more than sales such as he has suggested.

The Deputy-Chairman: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, but I have been listening to him for some time and trying to find the connection between his speech and this rather narrow Amendment on the Paper.

Mr. Walkden: The Amendment proposes to leave out the words "or otherwise," and I was trying to follow the lines of the Mover of the Amendment. I am sorry if I have misunderstood his objection, but it does seem to me that the Bill


as it stands would bring in quite a lot of people that many of us would like to leave out. If the proposal is only that certain retailers may do certain things, I would give support—though it would not be enthusiastic support—to this particular Clause, but the words "or otherwise" seem to allow other people to be brought in. Those people would be able to corner goods and hoard them for a long time, and I believe that would happen if we brought them within the scope of the Bill.

Mr. Rhys Davies: My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster (Mr. E. Walkden) and I are connected with the retail distribution trade. We have not been given any example to explain the necessity for putting these words "or otherwise" into the Clause. I should have thought that the manufacturer, the merchant, the wholesaler and the retailer really covered the whole of the trade of the country. What else has the Board of Trade in mind? I think we are entitled to ask that question when we see these words "or otherwise" in the Bill. Do they mean, for instance, that if a raid took place a Government Department could commandeer from the manufacturer class goods and rush them down to the devastated area? I would not object to that. Or could a municipality become a retailer for this purpose? I would not object to that. The trouble is that we do not know what is meant. It is common knowledge that if the premises of one co-operative society are blasted by the Germans, by what is called the enemy, another co-operative society comes to its assistance at once. Now that the co-operative movement covers practically the whole of the country it appears rather strange that the Board of Trade should put in these words "or otherwise." It is simply a question of trying to get to know, when you have brought in the manufacturer, the wholesaler, the merchant and the retailer, who is meant by "or otherwise." That is a fair question.

Captain Waterhouse: I sympathise with my hon. Friend in failing to understand the meaning of these words, because I must confess that I myself always find it difficult, and probably always shall find it difficult, to grasp what is meant by a Parliamentary draftsman. I understand however that these words are not intended to apply to any section of people. The Clause says:

… they may issue licences authorising such persons to restrict sales from such stocks to particular classes of buyers or otherwise as may be specified in a licence or to impose conditions …
We are not specifying the classes of people who may sell. We are asking for power to refer in these licences, not only to particular classes of buyer, but to other matters, such as, for example, the period during which sales may be made.

Mr. Montague: Then ought not the words "or otherwise" to be "or otherwise specified"?

Captain Waterhouse: The words are "or otherwise as may be specified."

Mr. Montague: It is dreadful draftsmanship.

Captain Waterhouse: This Amendment seeks to improve the draftsmanship, but I suggest that by leaving out these words the intention would be altered. This is a provision which will definitely be useful, and I assure the House it will not have the effect that either of the hon. Members opposite thinks it will. It will merely allow us not only to specify classes of persons but to specify conditions under which these de-restrictions should be made. I do again emphasise the fact that this is a de-restricting Measure and not one to increase restrictions.

Major Lyons: The question of imposing conditions is already specifically provided for in the Sub-section. If the words "or otherwise" were deleted, there would still be power to enforce conditions, because they are expressly stated in the Clause itself.

Captain Waterhouse: If we left out these words, we would only have the power to specify particular classes of people. I have endeavoured to point out that we are dealing not only with classes of buyer but with extraneous circumstances, such as the time at which the thing arises. Without these words we would be limited to classes. I am told that any two people doing the same thing, or wearing similar hats, can be termed a class of people, and we could twist the words "class of people" to meet almost any purpose; but putting the words "or otherwise" in here makes it clear that we do not only want to deal with classes of people but with other circumstances, as well, and I ask the Committee to accept the position.

Mr. Rhys Davies: The hon. and gallant Gentleman has enlightened us, but when he was dealing with the legal problem my eyes were directed towards the right hon. and learned Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Sir W. Jowitt). I am wondering what is passing through his mind when ordinary ignorant laymen like ourselves are dealing with these very difficult problems of law. It would be an excellent thing if we could have a legal luminary like the right hon. and learned Gentleman to enlighten us on these two words.

The Minister without Portfolio (Sir William Jowitt): I have not seen this Bill.

Dr. Russell Thomas: I should like to support the Parliamentary Secretary. He is only doing what is right and proper now that the principle of the Bill has been admitted and he has put in words which from this point of view make administration easier. I opposed the principle of the Bill on the Second Reading and thought the Bill was of no great value. At the same time I feel that hon. Members opposite, especially the hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. E. Walkden), are animated in their opposition towards the Amendment by the antagonism they showed towards the Bill on its Second Reading. I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for substituting decent and proper English for the unfortunate term he introduced on a previous occasion.

Amendment negatived.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill reported, with an Amendment; as amended, considered; read the Third time, and passed, with an Amendment.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND (NATIONAL ASSEMBLY) (MEASURES)

Mr. Willink: I beg to move,
That the Diocesan Education Committees Measure, 1943, passed by the National Assembly of the Church of England be presented to His Majesty for His Royal Assent in the form in which the said Measure was laid before Parliament.

Mr. Denman: I beg to second the Motion.

Question put, and agreed to.

JUVENILE DELINQUENTS (TREATMENT)

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Drewe.]

Captain Cunningham-Reid: The treatment of juvenile delinquents has recently shocked this House and the public and I am about to give the House the details of yet another case. I hope that as a result, in conjunction with what has come before the House before, hon. Members will come to the conclusion that our whole system of dealing with juvenile delinquents should drastically be looked into.
The particular case to which I desire to draw attention concerns a girl of 15 years of age who was prosecuted for being found at Hyde Park Corner drunk and incapable at 1 o'clock in the morning in company with soldiers. Before I relate what transpired, I desire to inform the House that both the girl and her mother—the father is dead—have without hesitation given consent to their case and their names being made public. Nevertheless, in the girl's future interests I have decided not to mention her name and I shall therefore refer to her from now onwards as "Mary."
The mothers tells me that Mary, her only child, was a good and useful daughter until such time as the mother was conscripted for war work and went to the Ministry of Information as a typist, when Mary was left on her own for long periods. It was then that this high-spirited and attractive-looking girl made undesirable friends. These taught her to drink and to do other things which were objectionable for one so young. Mary was completely dazzled by her new environment and her mother, not having the time to exercise proper control over her, in desperation, consulted Miss May, a St. Marylebone probation officer, who apparently suggested that the mother should give her daughter a good whipping. The mother pointed out that the daughter was considerably larger than she was. At that period that was the limit of the probation officer's assistance. Eventually a Mr. Hooper, of the St. Marylebone Juvenile Employment Exchange, found Mary a job as a junior clerk, and I would like to point out to the Under-Secretary representing the Home Office that it was not the mother


who found her daughter this job, as was suggested to me in a somewhat disparaging way by the Home Office.
It was soon after this that Mary was picked up by the police, drunk and incapable at Hyde Park Corner. She came before the Chelsea juvenile court, and the magistrate, the Hon. Lady Montagu, sent her to the Shirley remand home at Croydon to undergo medical examination. When she again came before the court, Miss Montagu, with the additional information that she had at her disposal, sentenced Mary to be on probation for a year, and at the suggestion of a Miss Rich, superintendent of the Croydon remand home, she sent the girl to do canteen work in a particular land girls' Y.W.C.A. hostel, which was in the country. She was seen off at the station by the St. Marylebone probation officer and for five weeks, that is to say, from then until the time that I drew the attention of the Home Secretary to this case, proper supervision of the girl ceased.
It is now stated by the Home Office that though it was about five weeks before the probation officer visited Mary, nevertheless, the probation officers, who, after all, were responsible for her, were in close touch with the hostel throughout and gave all particulars concerning Mary by letter and telephone. There is something strange here because a few days after this child arrived at the hostel the warden of the hostel rang up Mary's mother, and, after inquiring what had happened to a parcel of clothing that the girl was expecting, asked her mother what were the circumstances of the girl being sent there, as she had been told nothing. Mark you, the warden of this hostel had been told nothing about the probationer. Seeing that Mary was supposed to be in need of special care and to be under the warden's supervision, this seemed to her mother to be most extraordinary. The mother, of course, gave the desired information. Very shortly afterwards, I understand, this particular warden left the hostel under most doubtful circumstances. Before she left, however, she had found time to inform all the land girls in the hostel of the whole history of Mary's record that the mother had conveyed to the warden in confidence. Surely, that was an entirely unnecessary piece of unkindness on the part of that warden, but is it not rather extraordinary that this

warden, who left the hostel while Mary was still there, did not tell her successor whom she overlapped anything about Mary at all? The new warden wrote to the probation officer who had originally sent Mary down there, and I quote from her letter:
I was pleased to receive your letter. Having just taken over this hostel, I knew nothing about Mary.
The first warden told nothing to the second one about a person who was placed in her charge. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why did she not tell her?"] I shall come to that in a moment. Soon afterwards, the new warden told Mary's mother that it was impossible for her to exercise any supervision over her daughter during off duty hours as she the new warden, had too much to do. The Home Office have informed me that the new warden took up no such attitude. It may astonish them to realise that this warden has corroborated to me personally what was told to Mary's mother. The girl was, therefore, able to go into a near-by town, which is full of troops, completely on her own if she desired to do so. Until I took up this case she was at no time, during these first five weeks, at this hostel visited by any probation officer, to find out what the conditions were. Not even the local probation officer was asked to go and see her, and although Mary wrote to the Miss May I have referred to, she received no reply for four weeks. It is possible that that was because Miss May, the Marylebone probation officer, was ill, but Miss May had deputies. Anyhow, all this was not very encouraging to a girl who was supposedly being helped to pull herself together and make a fresh start. It is quite unnecessary for me to say that the girl felt utterly miserable and cast off by everyone, and that she complained of the immense amount of work she had to do. I understand that the land girls told her to shut up and that she was lucky not to be in an approved school. The new warden told her that unless she did what she was told without complaint she would be dismissed.
Early on Friday, 22nd October, I informed the Home Office that I intended to raise the matter, given the opportunity, on the Adjournment. That same afternoon a St. Marylebone probation officer arrived at Mary's hostel, hot-foot from London, to interview Mary and got her to say that she was happy there and would


grumable no more. The new warden gave this information to me the same day over the telephone. When I told this to Mary's mother she was dumbfounded. I must say that I was getting perplexed myself, so I decided to find out, at first hand, exactly what was going on at this hostel. On 25th October I called at the hostel and had a talk with the new warden and the cook, an elderly lady who had been there all the time, and with Mary. I asked Mary why she had told her mother one thing and the probation officer another and she replied, without any hesitation, that she had been told that if she was sent away from that hostel she would have to go before a magistrate again. With tears in her eyes she added that anything would be better than that. So she was forced to tell the probation officer what she did tell her. To put it bluntly, she was intimidated.
I then asked her about her work and the working hours. I find that the circumstances were slightly at variance with what I originally conveyed to the Home Office in the letter which I wrote to them on 20th October. I have here the true details of Mary's work, just as she gave them to me, and corroborated by other people in that hostel. It is a list which makes one tired even to read. This girl had to work from six o'clock in the morning until two or three o'clock in the afternoon and at night from 6.30 or 7.0 until 10 o'clock. The hours were sometimes varied but not counting meal-times, this girl of 15 had to work on an average 10 back-breaking hours a day of drudgery, scrubbing floors and kitchen pots, cleaning lavatories and the like. Never have I seen the hands of any woman in such a pitiable state as were the hands of that young girl, through the work she had to do. The house in which she worked is a very large, straggling, rather tumble-down Victorian mansion standing in its own grounds and Mary was expected to do practically the whole of it—not of course the cooking, but all the rest of the domestic work. I am very willing to read out the details of her work, but perhaps the House would prefer to be spared these harrowing details, and in that event I will spare them. On second thoughts however I do not think I will. I think the House ought to be aware of what this young girl had to do very day. I will give it to the House just as I took it down from

Mary herself. It was corroborated by the cook and by another inmate of the hostel. This was Mary's day:
Get up every morning at 6 o'clock then help to prepare or get the girls' breakfast and help to get the things ready for the girls' sandwiches. Then, while the breakfast is being served, as the girls finish their porridge, start to wash up and then as soon as the serving is finished clean pots and clear away the tables that the girls have used for sandwiches; then scrub the two tables, wash board down, clean sink, empty tea-pots, sweep the floor and then have my breakfast. When finished, start on girls' dormitories. Sweep floor, tidy stands, mop over floor with dry mop, then clean out grate, mop over floor with polish, dust everywhere and on top of girls' wardrobes and then put the bunks back and anything else that is moved. This is done three times because there are three dormitories. Then sweep first passage and mop over and dust thoroughly, then start on girls' bathrooms. Scrub at the back of the sinks, clean mirrors and scrub shelves, clean taps and basins and baths then sweep out well and mop over with polish. Sweep the other passage and clean and dust w.c., then mop all through and dust odd bits. Then clean staff bathroom and w.c. and polish floor and then the other passage and sweep back-stairs. Then sweep the front stairs and hall and scrub stairs down one day and the hall the other day right the way through and dust well. Then wash dusters, have lunch and am off duty at 2.0 till 7.0 or 6.30. In that time do my washing, wash self and do own room and any odd things such as mending. Then, when I come on at night, get plates down, help serve dinner after having my own and then wash pots, clean up kitchen and make girls' tea, take it in, and then finish off pots. Prepare supper, prepare pots of tea and lay tray which consists of sandwiches of bread and dripping or paste; then at 9 o'clock ring bell and the girls come to fetch it, then at 9.30 clear away and get to bed. After washing, getting undressed and in bed it is about 10 o'clock.
I asked Mary what other servants worked regularly at this house, and I was informed by her that there were only Mrs. Willis, the cook, and another girl who had been there for only a short time. Mrs. Willis appeared to be a reliable type of person. I read to her the list I have just read to the House and asked her whether it was correct. She replied, "Quite correct," and added that no young girl should be expected to do so much and such hard work. Mary had been sent by the magistrates to this hostel to do canteen work and she told me that if she could do the serving and do the extra kitchen work she would be happy to do it and could manage it. This girl had been sent to the hostel to do work fitting for one so young—canteen work—but having been got there, she was exploited and had to do work which was equivalent to adult


hard labour. The Home Secretary in a letter to me frankly said:
She was certainly overworked during the first fortnight.
I can assure the House that it was not only during the first fortnight that this girl was overworked; it was right up to the time the Home Secretary's attention was drawn to this case. At this hostel Mary took the place of a girl who had come from the same remand home as she had. This girl, who was having V.D. treatment in the local hospital, was dismissed from this same Y.W.C.A. hostel, because she was discovered with a lorry driver in her bedroom and I am informed that all she would say afterwards was, "They have driven me to it again."
The circumstances of these two girls who followed each other to this particular hostel convey a very ugly impression that these wretched children were just farmed out for sweated labour and that the treatment they received was calculated to make these young and susceptible girls into confirmed prostitutes. Even if we were to discount entirely the graver aspects of this case, what an extraordinary lack of human psychology has come to light? Is this the way our child delinquency system encourages a girl to regain her self-respect? Certainly this juvenile Mary Magdalen has not been so fortunate in the inspiration to make good as was the older Biblical Mary Magdalen.
On the day Mary was charged about 30 other girls were up for the same sort of offence. One wonders how many of these and hundreds like them are receiving such soul-destroying treatment as Mary received. What kind of system is it that enables such a system to go unnoticed? It must be wrong if such cases can come to light where there is no adequate continuity of surveillance when a child delinquent leaves London. Had the probation officers responsible visited Mary in the country, or had they even got the local probation officer to visit her these unsatisfactory conditions would have been found out—at least it is to be hoped so. Further, it might have been discovered that the first warden of the hostel was quite willing that these two girls should be given late night passes. Incidentally, the first warden of the hostel, who is no longer there, and who was chosen by the Y.W.C.A., left under a cloud. She was in the habit of having a man in her room

and bringing drink into the hostel, which, as hon. Members know, is contrary to all Y.W.C.A. regulations. So, one way and another, this did not seem quite a suitable place for the well-being of young girls from a remand home, and they would not have stayed there if the probation officers had been carrying out their duties properly. It may be that probation officers in these days have too much to do, but that excuse does not do away with the bad conditions. It is not without some significance that when I asked the St. Marylebone chief probation officer for an appointment, I was told that she could not manage it that day and that, in any case, before she saw me, she would first have to get the permission of the Home Office, as she was employed by them.
I would like to know whether it is a Home Office instruction that a Member of Parliament cannot, without first getting Home Office permission, see one of his constituency's probation officers about one of his own constituents? Here is the sequel. Soon after I gave notice of my intention to raise this matter in the House, Mary was whisked away from this deplorable hostel, and what she dreaded came to pass. She came before the court again the day before yesterday. The magistrate sent her back to her mother. And that is the story of Mary, a 15-year-old delinquent. It is possible that good may come out of evil and that Mary and her sad story may be the means of making this House and the Home Office come to the conclusion that if these deplorable things can happen to one young first offender, they can happen to hundreds, and that we had better make sure about this and have an investigation into the whole matter of juvenile delinquency.
There is only one more word I desire to say. I very much regret to have to say it, but the Home Office is now blaming Mary's mother. Goodness alone knows how that helps Mary. In a letter to me the Home Office says:
One of the difficulties in this case has been the mother's attitude since her second marriage. She refuses to allow Mary to stay with her and does not even want her to be in London.
Of course, the mother did not want the girl to stay in London—and if she was at home, she would be in London—surrounded as she would be by her bad companions, that had caused all the trouble. Subsequently, though, she had her daughter back, realising that the


limited control she could exercise over her at home was preferable to the slack and insufficient control of probation officers and the demoralising treatment that her daughter was subjected to outside London. The Home Office letter goes on to say of the mother:
She refuses to give an address to Mary, or to the probation officer, who are dependent upon telephone calls from the mother for all contact with her.
There is not a word of truth in this. In the first place, Mary knew her mother's address in London all along, and Miss Lawrence, the probation officer acting for Miss May when she was ill, was given the address by her mother when the latter changed her address. Miss Lawrence was, I understand, subsequently transferred to Camberwell, and as Miss May was ill, no wonder there was confusion among the authorities about the mother's address; but how unfair to blame the mother for this. Anyhow, I have reason to know that Miss May was, all along, well aware that the mother worked at the Ministry of Information and could at any time be contacted there. To add insult to injury, the Home Office letter goes on to say:
If Mary had been cast off by anybody, it was by her mother.
What a thing to say. The mother was sufficiently concerned about her daughter to get into touch with her Member of Parliament. She is a fine type of woman, and, throughout, she has shown the most motherly concern and responsibility for her only daughter. On one occasion the mother telephoned to her daughter at the hostel three times during the week-end, but each time was told that her daughter was not available. That was not so. It was not the mother's fault that she was called up for war work and consequently could not watch her daughter. It is a shame to conscript her and then to blame her, and for the Home Office to "pass the buck" in this mean manner. In conclusion, I trust that in view of what I have told the Home Office they will not attempt to side-track or to brush aside the sum total of what I have conveyed to them to-day, but that this total, together with the recent case of the boy who was birched, will convince the Home Office and will convince this House that the whole system pertaining to juvenile delinquents is rusty, is rotten and should now be overhauled.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Peake): The hon. and gallant Member has made a lengthy indictment of the probation service. This matter has been the subject of some correspondence between him and the Home Secretary, to which I shall refer in a few moments. He wrote a long letter to the Home Office about this case on 20th October, but in his speech to-day he has, for the first time, made a number of completely new charges which were not mentioned in that letter. The most serious of those charges, I think, is that the probation officer whom the girl's mother consulted in the middle of May advised the mother to give the girl a good whipping. Surely if my hon. and gallant Friend had investigated this case thoroughly, as he claimed to have done, at the time he wrote to the Home Secretary, he might have made that allegation at the time, so that it could have been investigated and replied to.

Captain Cunningham-Reid: I only heard of it since then.

Mr. Peake: It is extremely difficult for a Minister to stand at this Box thinking that he has had the full case put before him by an hon. Member and then to find that completely new charges are brought forward at the last moment and without notice.
So far as the background of this case is concerned, it is a type of case which is all too numerous at the present time. It is a story of a girl of 15 who has fallen into bad company, who has become what we describe at the Home Office, for lack of any better term, "a good time girl," who has taken to drink and going about with soldiers at all hours of the day and night.

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: It is a good description, too.

Mr. Peake: She comes from a very indifferent home. Her mother was a widow who is now living with a man who is already married to somebody else. There is friction, naturally, as there always is in those cases where the daughter has been very devoted to her father, now dead, between the daughter and her mother and the other man, and that is the reason, no doubt, why this girl has got into trouble. She came before an experienced magistrate, who is well known, I should think to some hon.


Members, on 1st September. She was sent for a fortnight to a remand home for inquiries to be made. On 15th September she came before the court again. She was put on probation, and what is called a "residence condition" was imposed, arrangements having been made for her to be sent to the Women's Land Army hostel to which the hon. and gallant Member has referred. I do not think he referred to the locality, and evidently he does not wish the hostel to be publicly identified.

Captain Cunningham-Reid: That was my idea.

Mr. Peake: The hon. and gallant Member also referred throughout to the girl as "Mary," but I cannot see any objection to her real Christian name being used in this discussion, because the Christian name is in the correspondence, from which I should like to read one or two passages. Undoubtedly in this case there has been a "slip up" by the probation service. The particular probation officer was ill and was on sick leave for most of the time that this girl was at this Women's Land Army hostel. There is no doubt she ought to have been visited soon after her arrival and kept under continuous supervision by the probation service throughout the period, but the probation officer in question, who is a good officer, was ill or away on sick leave, and, incidentally, her home has been blitzed, which also caused her a certain amount of distraction and trouble. But undoubtedly the supervision in this case was not what we should have liked it to be. I frankly admit that to the House.
I understand that two complaints are made by the hon. and gallant Member. One is that she was not properly supervised and had opportunities at this hostel of getting into further trouble, and the second is that she was overworked while at the hostel. To some extent those two complaints cancel each other out. If this girl was occupied in domestic drudgery for the long hours described by the hon. and gallant Member it is clear that she could have had little opportunity of getting into trouble.

Mr. McEntee: Surely a girl working long hours would seek some distraction afterwards, even though tired.

Mr. Peake: The hon. Member may take that view, but my own view always has been that people get into more trouble through not having enough to do than through having too much. I will read a passage or two from the letter which my right hon. Friend wrote to the hon. and gallant Member on 25th October. My right hon. Friend said:
The girl has settled down and is happy working under the new warden. The probation officer told her she could, if she wished, move to a hostel in London, but she said emphatically that she wished to remain at—. She hopes to get into the Women's Land Army when she is 16 at Christmas. There have been difficulties in the supervision of this case, and while it is true the girl was not visited before 22nd October, the probation officers were in close touch with the hostel by letter and telephone throughout. Miss May, the probation officer concerned, has been on sick leave during most of the period of the girl's probation, and last week, when she intended to visit the hostel, was bombed out of her flat. Supervision has been carried on by substitutes and by the rest of the probation staff, who were already carrying heavy case loads. You will be aware that replacements and substitutes suitable for this kind of work are hard to find at the present time.
Then there is set out the substance of the girl's own story as to long hours which she worked at this hostel. The girl herself, in a letter which she wrote to the probation officer on 21st September, set out the hours which she worked and said this:
I have to be in by 9.15 every night when I am off, and so I do not think you need worry about me. I never go out by myself but I am always with the girls. I forgot to tell you that my wages are 17s. 6d. a week with all found. I can eat whatever I like when I like.
That, I think, disposes of the suggestion that the girl was unhappy or was maltreated at this hostel. Undoubtedly the hours of work were too long, but those conditions were remedied, so I am informed, when the warden in charge of the hostel when the girl arrived there was replaced by a new warden on 1st October.

Captain Cunningham-Reid: Where in that letter did it say that the girl was happy? I cannot find it.

Mr. Peake: I thought that was quite a right and proper inference from the quotation which I read to the House from the girl's letter. If the hon. and gallant Member disputes that that was a statement by someone who was happy, we can each form our own opinion about it. My hon. and gallant Friend has taken great interest in this case. He has been


to see the hostel. He has seen the girl, and I understand that he interviewed the girl's mother. As a consequence of that, the new warden, against whom I did not understand my hon. and gallant Friend to make any complaint, has definitely stated that she cannot keep the girl in the hostel any longer. That is the reason why the girl was taken to the court once more. As the hostel, where she was residing as part of her probation, would no longer keep her, it became necessary to decide what her future was to be. She was taken before the same magistrate, who put her on probation, on 3rd November, and the condition of residence was discharged, because her mother is now prepared to have the girl living with her at home, which she was not willing to do when this trouble arose.

Captain Cunningham-Reid: For good reasons.

Mr. Peake: It may be for good reasons, but at any rate the attitude of the mother has now changed. The hostel where she was working is no longer prepared to keep her, although she herself seems—

Mr. Cluse: Why? Do they want to get another girl to do the same kind of work?

Mr. Peake: On account of the difficulty of supervising her adequately and on account, as I understand it, of the visit of my hon. and gallant Friend and the amount of publicity which, in the view of the warden, this case was attracting. It is to be hoped that this girl will be better treated at home in the future than she was at the time when she got into trouble. She is evidently a very nice girl. The probation officer has made very good reports upon her, and so far as we are concerned we are most anxious to do all we can to assist her on to the right road again. The probation service undoubtedly, as I have explained in this particular case—

Earl Winterton: Did I understand my right hon. Friend to say at an earlier stage—a fact that was not disclosed by the hon. and gallant Member—that the mother was living with a paramour, a man not her husband, and is it not apparent from the report of the probation service, that a good deal of trouble was caused by those home conditions?

Mr. Peake: That, of course, is most clearly so. A very large proportion of the girls who get into trouble in this way come from broken homes. The mother, who was not willing to have the girl at home before is now willing to do so. The magistrate has consequently discharged the residence condition, and the girl has gone home again. I admit that the probation service in this case has not functioned with the efficiency which we all expect of it. It is an isolated example in my experience. I have the greatest admiration for the work of this service: I have seen a good deal of it, and I think it is unfortunate in this instance. I do not at all resent my hon. and gallant Friend having raised this case in the House, but I think it would be a great mistake if hon. Members thought that slips of this nature were common with the probation service, because that is not my experience. Nor do I believe it is the experience of hon. Members generally. Having said that, I hope that hon. Members will be satisfied that, as a rule, these things do not happen and that in this particular case no great harm resulted and that, as a result of the case being raised, it will lead to the greatest possible vigilance being taken to see that nothing of this sort occurs again.

Dr. Russell Thomas: I do not want to make any difficulties for my right hon. Friend at all, but I think the hon. and gallant Member did say that the probation officer refused an interview with him and replied that there was a general instruction that Home Office permission had to be obtained.

Mr. Peake: That is a new point to me, and I have not heard it before. I did not know that the hon. and gallant Member had had any difficulty in getting an inter-with with the probationer officer. As I understood, there was no blank refusal but merely a statement that it was inconvenient to see her on a particular day.

Captain Cunningham-Reid: No, Sir, it was that I had to get the permission of the Home Office to see her. Is that so?

Mr. Peake: No, I know of no instruction to that effect at all. I will certainly look into the matter to see that there is no instruction. It is obviously of the greatest importance that Members of Parliament should be able to make contact with the probation officers in cases of this character, and I will certainly see that an


instruction to that effect is, if necessary, sent out.

Mr. McEntee: I would like to know whether the institution to which reference has been made has been approved by the Home Office. The home is of a character to which we are responsible for sending young persons who may not have committed any crime at all. In this case it may be said that she committed a crime by getting drunk, but I would point out that people can be sent to the homes who have committed no crime. The only thing that can be said is that there is no effective control over the girls by their parents. We ought to be satisfied that the homes to which such children can be sent are homes to which any children ought to be sent. The evidence in this case would appear to indicate that the supervision in this house must have been exceptionally bad. The Home Office cannot escape blame for any lack of their own supervision of the homes to which children are sent.
It is all very well to come along now and say, "Well, we agree about this isolated case." Have we any evidence that it is an isolated case? Frankly, I am not at all sure that it is. I handed in a Question on this very matter, and I hope that it will receive discussion in the new Session. It draws attention to facts in connection with children who are sent to institutions of this kind, and to the handicap that it is to them in after life. I hope the Question will appear on the Paper in the new Session for the consideration of the Prime Minister. Here is the case of a home presumably considered to be satisfactory by the Home Office. I see that magistrates in the various police courts have been informed that this, among others, is the type of home to which young children can be sent with the approval of the Home Office. We ought to have some inquiry. I honestly believe that the Home Office ought to have inquired more than they appear to have done up to now. We have been told, and it has not been denied, that another girl was able to take men into her bedroom at night. We have been told that the hours of labour are disgracefully long. We can only assume that the Home Office either did not employ responsible people—I do not charge the right hon. Gentleman with that, of course—or the people who were

responsible for the actual administration did not make any inquiry about it. I should like to know how long those conditions have been in operation in this home. We have been told that it is a Young Women's Christian Association home.

Mr. Peake: No, it is a Women's Land Army hostel.

Captain Cunningham-Reid: But run by the Y.W.C.A. That is my point.

Mr. McEntee: It is a home for Land Army girls run by the Young Women's Christian Association. I do not think they have anything to be proud of. When young girls of 15 can be sent there and when a number of Land Army girls are living there day by day, one wonders what kind of influence is being brought on them. It is a home to which Land Army girls and juvenile delinquents are sent. It may be that there are even more girls than that, not only Land Army girls but other juvenile delinquents, some having committed criminal acts and some net. The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head. Has he any knowledge of that? Has inquiry been made as to who goes to that home?

Mr. Peake: I do not know of any juvenile delinquents at the home.

Mr. McEntee: Was not the statement made in a previous case of somebody being sent in similar circumstances to the home and she was found with some men in her bedroom? Is not that the case?

Mr. Peake: If it was alleged that the other girl was a juvenile delinquent, it is a new allegation.

Mr. McEntee: It may be a new allegation, but surely it is one that ought to be inquired into. If conditions like that exist, will the right hon. Gentleman promise this House that inquiry will be made as a consequence of this case, and if such an inquiry can be held it will be not only into this hostel but into others, periodical inquiries, so that we can be informed? There should be an inquiry not only at the time a home is certified by the Home Office as a suitable place but periodically during its continuance as a Home Office home. May we have an assurance that an inquiry will be made that will be satisfactory to the public


generally that girls will be well looked after?
In this case it has been stated by the right hon. Gentleman, and I did not like it, that it was really the fault of this girl's mother. He went out of his way to give a public advertisement of the conditions under which the girl's mother is living. I do not think it is fair to the mother, and I resent it. Everyone will read in the newspapers or in Hansard the conditions under which that home is run, and it will soon get round where it is and people will know. All the Land Army girls will know.

Mr. Peake: Both the hon. and gallant Member who raised it and I have been extremely careful not to mention any names or places, so that no unfortunate publicity will attach to them.

Mr. McEntee: Surely the right hon. Gentleman will know that is not so. Does he not think that the Land Army girls will talk? Does he think that they will be as astute as he has been in withholding names? Frankly, I do not. I think it is bound to be made public, to the detriment of the family concerned. I think it was rather mean to mention the conditions under which the mother was living, and as to trying to blame those conditions for the girl's offence, if he was right in that, surely that is not the type of home to send the girl back to. That is the obvious thing for one to think. The right hon. Gentleman stands up and tells us that the real trouble was the home, that the girl never had decent conditions in the home, and then he went on to tell us that in future the home conditions will be better than the institution to which we had to take her. The magistrate has decided to send her home. Will there be any supervision of her now? If the home will be of the character that the right hon. Gentleman said, what is to be the future of this girl, and why was she sent home, if the home is so bad?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman must be careful. He is criticising the verdict of the judge, and we are not allowed to do that.

Mr. McEntee: I should be very sorry to do that, because I have the highest regard for the judges and their judgments generally. I am thinking more of the girl than I am of the judge. The judge sent her

back, and one would imagine it was on some assurance of the Home Office that the conditions of the home were now improved. If conditions were so good that she should be sent back there, I do not like the way the matter was handled at an earlier period. I hope that, as a consequence of the discussion of this unsavoury case and the handling of it by the Home Office, it will not be possible for such a case to come before this House for a long time to come.

Mr. Astor: I rise to speak, because for a good many years I have been a member of the council of the Clarke Hall Fellowship, in memory of Sir William Clarke Hall, who started the probation system in this country. Before the war we were short of probation officers. Probation can only be an effective thing if there is real supervision. The idea that probation is letting someone off with a caution is the greatest possible error. Probation cannot be effective if the probation officer has so many cases to deal with that each case cannot get real supervision. Apart from that, even before the war there was a shortage of remand homes and places where delinquents could be sent under really satisfactory conditions. Some answers to written Questions which the right hon. Gentleman's Department kindly gave me this week show that the situation has got worse during the war. Naturally, the number of probation officers has tended to decrease. There is not the same number of young people coming into the service and there is a natural wastage through marriage. There are many more broken homes now than there were before. Fathers are away on service, mothers are working, and children, even those from 11 to 14 years, spend a great deal of time in the streets and get into undesirable company. Before the war, under normal conditions of home life that kind of thing would not have occurred. There is a large return to London of children who had previously been evacuated. There is an inflationary tendency, in that there is more money coming to young people who can earn it, and there are all the problems connected with the presence of British and Allied troops who are also cut off from their home life—some of the Allied troops having a very large amount of money to spend.
The situation now is, in every aspect, worse than it was before the war. I hope


this Debate will be an occasion for the Home Office to go very carefully into both the immediate and the future question. These girls are the mothers of the future. This is a country with a small population, dependent on quality, and it will be well worth while to divert a small number of really good women and men into these probation and like services in order to deal with the trouble which we all know is going on to-day. After the war we want to have a probation service much better paid than it is, with better prospects, so that when demobilisation comes, we can attract women who have been officers in the A.T.S., the W.R.N.S. and the W.A.A.F., and who have had experience and have been successful in the handling of girls. Similarly we want men with fine Service records who have had experience of dealing with personel problems to enter into that service. We need to look into the question of more remand homes and more approved schools. I hope that the Home Office will add to that an inspectorate to go round and keep friendly contact with these institutions and keep them informed of the situation in each place. I hope they will suggest to hon. Members who have approved schools or remand homes in their constituencies, to keep in touch with those institutions. It would be a valuable link for the Home Secretary and a useful piece of work for Members to do. Finally, there are some very good people, now on the retired list, who could be brought back. The most outstanding woman who ever dealt with the question of delinquency, Miss Barker, is now retired. I think people like her and others might well be brought back and I hope this Debate will provide an occasion on which all these questions can be reconsidered.

Mr. Graham White: One point which emerges from this Debate has not been dealt with by my right hon. Friend. There may be some apprehension in the minds of hon. Members regarding the excessive hours of work in this hostel. I would be glad if he would tell us whether he has any control over the hours of work in those hostels generally, and whether there is any regular inspection. Presumably, those homes are in receipt of some grants from public funds. It may well be that they are not within the scope of his Department. It may be that the Ministry of Labour and

National Service is responsible, but will the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to inquire, and see whether there is any control over the hours of employment in these places? With regard to the observations which my hon. Friend has just made, I should like to join him in his tribute to the probation service. On the point of the hon. Member for Southampton (Dr. R. Thomas) about a barrier being placed between probation officers and Members of Parliament, in my experience there has been the greatest possible access and every available help has been given in every case in which I have taken an interest. Could the right hon. Gentleman also say whether the Home Office are trying to increase the number of probation officers? Perhaps he will be good enough to deal with the point about the hours of labour.

Mrs. Adamson: I would like to join the hon. Member for East Fulham (Mr. Astor) in his desire that probation officers and services should be investigated with a view to trying to get some people who have retired and who are experienced in this work back, as various other Government Departments have brought back retired officers into their service and found their work very valuable in this kind of war. I am profoundly disturbed by some of the revelations in this case. Here was a young girl of 15 years out at late hours or early hours in the morning, drunk and in company with soldiers. She would be in considerable moral danger and would rightly be detained, but I wonder whether the men whose company she was in were also detained. That may be a new factor in the situation, but it is one which ought to be taken into consideration. There is far too much of this going on at the present time, and social workers, both men and women, are deeply disturbed by such occurrences, which I believe are a regular feature of our large cities.
I too feel that a protest must be made about the long hours and the exploitation of this girl of tender years. I feel that this girl has been the victim of a series of misfortunes in so far as the type of home from which she came, the lack of parental control, the association with undesirable people, are concerned, and then to be sent to a home of this kind, where evidently there is no real supervision. It may have been due to a


breakdown in the probation service, but these facts disturb us. They are lamentable. My right hon. Friend said that no details had been given in this case as to the whereabouts of this particular Land Army home, but I have ears, and I certainly seemed to get the location of the particular home, and I know it very well. I am surprised to hear of incidents of men being able to get into the bedrooms of the women residents there. The place is in an isolated district, but it would never have been possible if it was under proper supervision. With these revelations I say that a place of that kind is not a fit and proper place to send a child like this, who is charged with a particular offence and who needs real guidance and help if she is to be put on the road to a better life and to have a future.
I am not going to enter into the merits and importance of the statements or the case put forward by the hon. and gallant Member for St. Marylebone (Captain Cunningham-Reid), but in view of these new facts I think the Home Office would be well advised to have an investigation into this case, because these cases are disturbing, particularly in regard to what has taken place or is alleged to have taken place. Information has been given to this House in regard to the general position of delinquency among children. I feel very disturbed about the whole position and the revelations in this case, and I trust the Home Office will give us an inquiry and will be able to take action which will make these cases a thing of the past and which will ensure that children who are delinquents and who need help and guidance, particularly our young girls of 15 and 16, are to get the proper kind of treatment and help which will enable them to become in the future, by training and other methods, really good citizens. I must add, finally, that I feel very unhappy that after all the statements that have been made and the accusations against the girl's home, she should have been returned to that home. Therefore, in view of all these facts and disturbing revelations, I hope the Home Office will have an inquiry into the whole position.

Commander King-Hall: I will only detain the House for a few moments, but there are three questions I would like to put. Firstly, is there a list supplied to justices of various homes

and hostels to which these junior delinquents are sent? Secondly, is this list kept under constant revision, as conditions may obviously vary from time to time if the wardens change and so on? Thirdly, is this list published, and can it be easily obtained? I would just add this word on the general problem of which this is an example. I am probably talking to the converted in pressing the Home Office to encourage in every possible way the development of youth clubs. I think we should spend more money than we are spending in assisting youth clubs and youth organisations. Since I have mentioned money, I think it is a remarkable, creditable and very noteworthy fact, which I hope will be given publicity not only in this country but abroad, that this House of Commons yesterday spent six minutes in passing a Vote of Credit for £1,250,000,000. To-day it has spent, rightly and usefully spent, nearly one and a half hours in investigating one case of a single individual. That, I think, reflects credit on the operation of Parliament in time of war. I hope that note will be taken of that elsewhere.

Mr. Driberg: I should like to ask one question, not because I wish to cavil or quibble about what may seem a minor point, but in order to get all the facts of this very distressing case out. I should like to ask exactly what the right hon. Gentleman meant when he said, as I understood, that the new warden of the hostel had sent the girl away because of the publicity arising out of this case. Surely, as he himself said, both the hon. Member who raised the matter and the right hon. Gentleman himself were most careful not to mention any names or places. Will he explain what he meant when he said that it was because of the publicity that the warden, against whom there is no reflection at all, thought it better to send the girl away, back to this unsatisfactory home? I hope that, because of the numerous expressions of concern in various parts of the House, the right hon. Gentleman will take advantage of the privilege which, subject to your ruling, Mr. Speaker, I think he has, to ask leave of the House to speak again, and to answer these questions fully.

Mr. Peake: I am not sure whether the leave of the House is necessary to enable me to speak again on the Adjourn-


ment, but if it is, I will ask for it. A number of points have been put. I listened with interest to the hon. Member for East Fulham (Mr. Astor), who has had to leave the Chamber. He has an extensive knowledge of the probation service. Of course, we want to maintain, and if possible to increase, the efficiency of the probation service. It is difficult to do so in time of war. We want to get young people into the service; we find that they handle these boys and girls better than middle-aged or elderly people do. At present there are very heavy demands for persons who are of a suitable age to undertake probation work, but we will certainly see whether there are any temporary relaxations of our rule about recruitment which could be made with a view to strengthening the service.

Mr. Frankel: And increasing the salaries of probation officers? They are lamentably low.

Mr. Peake: Note will be taken of what the hon. Member says.

Sir Edward Campbell: It is better to take on none at all unless you are going to get the best. It is a very important service. Do not get somebody just to fill a gap.

Mr. Peake: I am not sure whether, if we aim at the perfection which the hon. Member desires, we shall be able to get an adequate service. We have to look round and do what we can in the circumstances. We are doing all we can on the other points, such as the provision of remand homes and approved schools. The number of approved schools has been increased by 33 per cent. during the war, which is not a bad record, in view of the difficulty of securing accommodation and equipment in present conditions.
The hon. Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. Graham White) asked whether there was any control over the hours of labour in these institutions, hostels and so forth. So far as I am aware, there is no statutory control over hours of domestic service in this type of institution, but I will look into the point. As to whether it would be possible, if these institutions are in receipt of Government grants, for any conditions to be imposed in regard to hours worked in them, I will look into that.
The hon. Member for Dartford (Mrs. Adamson) said—and I think we are all in agreement with her—that this girl was a victim of misfortune, and that this case ought to be investigated. Of course it will be. We have investigated the statements which the hon. and gallant Member put in writing to my right hon. Friend. We have not yet had any chance of investigating the new statements which he made to-day, some of which were important, and some of which were very damaging should they turn out to be true, and I welcome the opportunity of a thorough investigation by the Home Secretary into the allegations, and such an investigation will be undertaken.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ormskirk (Commander King-Hall) asked whether magistrates in juvenile courts had available to them a list of suitable homes for girls in need of care and protection, whether that list was kept up to date, and whether that list was published. I rather think, speaking without any official guidance on this matter, that what usually happens is that the probation officer tries to find a suitable home and that it would be the duty of the probation officer to see that it is a suitable home before making a recommendation. I do not think that there is any published list. I imagine that a good many private persons who have no children of their own take care of girls of this character. Clearly it would be undesirable for the names of people, who undertake this work, to be published, but my hon. and gallant Friend's points will be noted and, if possible, we will make use of them. The hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberg) asked why the girl was being allowed to return to an unsatisfactory home.

Mr. Driberg: Not quite. I asked the reason for the statement about the publicity.

Mr. Peake: Yes. The people who find homes for these boys and girls do it on a voluntary basis. Nobody can compel them to keep these boys and girls if they do not wish to do so. If they find a boy or girl to be difficult, and decide to throw their hands in, a new home has to be found. That, I understand, is what occurred in this case. The new warden thought that this girl and her case were likely to give some bother. Possibly she wished to avoid publicity being drawn to her particular hostel. Quite justifiably,


in my opinion, she said to the probation officer, "Please take this girl away." The probation service brought this girl to court again. The girl had been away for two months or more, and the magistrate, in her wisdom, decided to allow the girl to go back home. I do not think we should challenge that decision without further knowledge. The statements which have been made in the Debate will be carefully examined, and full investigation made into all the circumstances.

Captain Cunningham-Reid: I am very glad that there is going to be an investigation. I would just ask whether, when that investigation is completed, I could be made aware of the fact and of the findings. In the meantime, may I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his courtesy and frankness in this Debate?

Dr. Russell Thomas: The right hon. Gentleman has spoken of the possibility of enlarging the probation service and of helping these people after these unfortunate things have happened to them. I think it is far better to try to prevent these young girls falling into vice, if it is possible to do so. I do not believe it is a sound principle to legislate for immorality, but we all know that at present the West End of London is riddled with this type of thing. Young girls of 15, 16 and 17 are constantly being seduced and their whole lives set on the wrong path. If the right hon. Gentleman could strengthen the hands of the police and so on to deal with this kind of thing, I am sure it would do far more good than trying to cure the complaint, as it were, after so much damage has been done.

Question, "That this House do now adjourn," put, and agreed to.